


ceremonials

by newvision



Series: ceremonials [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, M/M, Pining, or: music student au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 19:23:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15713523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newvision/pseuds/newvision
Summary: Things can’t end now. They were finally getting somewhere, somewhere that was real and painful and what could be more important than that? It’s imperceptible to imagine a life without pain, because the pain is so often accompanied by the happy, by the soft, by the kind, and by the pretty. A life cannot be considered a life in the absence of these things, and Soonyoung will be damned if he lets another person slip into the inviting lull of numbness; let alone someone who clearly feels as deeply as Wonwoo does.After all, what was music but the technicolour palette of life transcribed into sound?or: the one where wonwoo is a pianist that hits a block, and soonyoung is a violinist with far too much time on his hands.





	ceremonials

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wonuza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonuza/gifts).



> The moment I saw your prompt I thought it sounded distinctly Amber-like, but it was still a pleasant surprise to know it was you I'd written this for. It's also like coming full circle because you wrote the first snwu I ever read, so: there's that. 
> 
> I really hope this lives up to what you had in mind. I tried putting in as many of your universe elements as I could, but eventually it ended up as a way more personal piece. (as always, but I felt like this time it was something I was finally ready to put words around.)
> 
> But beyond that; this is just for you, and I hope you love these versions of our boys as much as I loved writing them.

_ceremonials ; a system of ceremonies, rites, or formalities prescribed for observed on any particular occasion; a rite._

 

**i. lover to lover, and black to red**

 

The first time Wonwoo ever played the piano, something monstrous burst forth from the keys. It wasn’t an entity that jumped forth with teeth bared like the dragon in nearly every fairytale whose only job it was to destroy, but was instead made of the shrapnel of ivory keys and the loose fragments of piano strings packed into an unrecognizable silhouette that took a headfirst dive into his chest.

 

The more he plays, the worse it gets. It sits like a thorn in his heart, wrapping just a little tighter with every fumble of his slippery fingers, every yawning silence where he just can’t bring himself to continue with the next bar.

 

Which is how he ends up tearing down the empty hallway of the conservatory, the door of his practice room swinging wildly in the wake of his thudding footsteps.

 

Usually, he’d be straining his ears to catch the sharp notes of a violin, the comforting rumble of a cello, the gentle breeze of a saxophone - but today, for the first time, he doesn’t even bother trying to tune his head in. It isn’t that he’s got no appreciation for them. He knows how much work goes into creating the perfect piece, to have hands bleeding and callused from pressing on strings for hours on end while you cry and cry because you just _can’t_ seem to get this one little section right. He knows this, he does. And yet his brain seems to prove otherwise, to betray him by making him count the empty thumps of his own footfalls on the tiled floor, hands clenched in the pockets of his leather jacket. His own piano sits closed now, its lid decisively shut. He fears that one day he will finally come back to pry it open, only to reveal keys falling apart and yellowed, the pedals stuck fast in their positions. For a moment, that’s all he can see; his own papery hands pressing rotting keys, an indefinite number of years into the future. The certainty of that image scares him and he slams the lid of the piano in his haste to leave, his sheet music caught in it like some unfortunate prey in the mouth of a beast.

 

He doesn’t stop to look, but if he had, he would’ve seen a curious purple head of hair peek its way around the corner, the bow of a violin clutched to their chest as they watched Wonwoo go.

 

                                                                   /

 

When you are in a fog, it’s incredibly difficult to point to a decisive moment with an accusatory finger and say that that’s when your life cracked down the middle, a great fault in the otherwise pristine selection of music awards and gifted programme certificates. As far as Wonwoo knows, he’d been practicing hard, working towards showcases and recitals and the praising smiles of his teachers. The passing of time for him wasn’t marked by the steady ticking of a clock, but the varied clicks of a metronome, always matching his pace. That was always something steady he could rely on. Whenever he was alone, he could intertwine his chords and notes with the rhythmic pounding of the metronome. When he was not, Mingyu (or Jihoon, or both) would nestle into his side at the piano bench, and watch attentively as his fingers grazed the keys to coax out melodies he might one day be able to call his own.

 

Recently, though, they’d been watching him with frowns. Mingyu would have to tell him to put more emotion into the entirety of the piece, and Jihoon would make Wonwoo run basic chromatic scales and arpeggios just to get rid of his stiffness. Wonwoo would end up losing focus halfway through the piece, holding down the pedal a little too long, transforming the notes into an ugly, unintelligible blur. He becomes almost entirely reliant on muscle memory to get through the music, instead of focusing on improving his technique and execution. Everything stagnates, and Wonwoo wonders what kind of hurt it would take to shock his mind back to its usual functionality. His notes slump and collapse under the strict ticking of the metronome, unable to keep up with its unforgiving marching beat. The more he plays, the worse it gets.

 

Eventually, he stops playing at all.

 

Funnily enough, he spends his time away from playing by watching other people play. When the sun is up, he feigns focus at school. He sits in lectures about composition theory and doodles in the line margins of his notebook, his gel pen creating ugly black fangs on the minims, yellow highlighter to colour in the eyes. His friends watch him out of the corner of their eyes, pens ticking nervously. The first few times, Mingyu had been nice enough to try to loan Wonwoo his notes despite his chicken scratch handwriting. Wonwoo had smiled softly and pushed Mingyu’s hand away, and then hightailed it the hell out of there. He gets a scolding from Jihoon for being rude later that day, but all he can bring himself to do is shrug and walk away again.

 

Once night settles in, though, Wonwoo’s out like a bat from hell. He bursts forth from school to crawl jazz bars in the worst parts of town, a permanent scowl on his face and a constant string of gins and tonics sipped slowly while watching the newest object of his interest. Most of the time, he finds boys like him, all crooked edges and slanted smiles while they play. They’re in a world of their own, no sheets to blanket their creativity. It looks easy, the way there seems to be no rigour in their work. It is in no way as refined as the way his peers play, but their love for the instrument shines through anyway. They don’t have a standard to live up to, no “‘Royal School Of Music” title hanging over their heads to dictate that they’re greatness defined. They don’t have the time signatures of dead old men stamped across their hands, no great symphonies to coax out from the keys. They just do whatever they feel sounds right, sounds pretty. Wonwoo envies them for it.

 

He’s lost count of the number of times he’s wished there was an easy solution for this. Logically, all he would have to do is practice. Maybe he might get his spark back, maybe he wouldn’t, but at least he could reassure himself with the comfort that comes with a possibility. The problem, though, lies in the fact that he cannot stand having to pull himself through another requiem that sounds so strangled coming from him, while a classmate leans into the same piece with such ease. It’s a difficult thing to stomach, losing the one thing you’ve built your entire life around. He’d convinced himself that music was what he was meant to do, his parents had forked out _thousands_ of dollars to give this to him, and what does he go and do but lose his passion entirely? It’s disappointing, to say the least. Inevitable? Maybe.

 

That’s the strange thing about music though, about any creative industry. You can start off fine and dandy, perform at a billion different recitals and not get tired. Everyone will love you and the best teachers will want you as their student because they all want the credit for turning good into great. You’ll preen in their praise, straighten the collar of your jacket and dust off any doubts you had because this is affirmation of your worthiness. You keep going, full steam ahead. You win another bunch of awards that by this point may as well be nameless to you. And then finally, you become an adult surrounded by people just as great as you, if not more. You realize you’re  nothing special, and your ivory tower crumbles. Now, your days are punctuated by sharp voices telling you what you should be doing to make the music flow in the correct way, even though there should never even _be_ any kind of correct way when it comes to creativity. Every single thing you’ve ever worked for has become entirely meaningless, because now you understand.

 

Wonwoo understands, and the world is no longer beautiful.

 

When he finally steps outside, it’s pouring.

 

                                                /

 

The only place near enough for him to take refuge on campus is a small bookshop, yellow-lit and cozy. Wonwoo’s spent many a skipped practice period wandering its towering shelves, hiding in between ‘Yanagihara’ and ‘Yoon’ whenever he hears familiar voices coming through the doorway. Today though, he’s alone for the most part. The old couple who run the place are sitting by the counter, and they offer him genuine smiles as he passes by. He’s very much drenched from his short sprint from the covered hanging of campus to the bookshop, but if they are disapproving of this, they don’t show it.

 

It’s cool inside the shop, and Wonwoo shivers involuntarily. He tries to look at books to take his mind off of his misery, because it’s either he gets to hide here or - he has to go back to the practice room and drag himself through scales, over and over again even though his fingers are numb and clumsy over the keys and he just can’t seem to get any of this right. The rain is still pounding outside, heavy and relentless. It launches itself in sheets against the glass windows of the shop and for a moment Wonwoo stares out, his eyes unseeing. The lights of the shop are reflected in the glass, and below that his own silhouette stares back at him, frozen in place.

 

The only thing that doesn’t line up is the small figure running its way across the square, an instrument case held over their head like a totally useless makeshift umbrella.

 

Wonwoo watches them come, making no effort to to disappear backwards into the shelves. If anything, the chances of him knowing this person are close to zero, given that pianos cannot be fit into portable cases. The only connection between them is their shared practice slot; but given that this person also looks to be skipping theirs, they’ll have that in common. Anyone who decides to forego practicing in favour of hanging out in a nondescript bookshop is automatically in his good books. Wonwoo watches him as he comes in, shaking the water off of his oversized floral flannel and hair like a very wet dog.

 

Under the lights of the shop, he notices that the boy has purple hair, deep and rich and impossibly soft-looking despite the rain. A silver nose ring shines from the right side of his face, but it does nothing to harden his features. Instead, his full cheeks immediately give him an air of friendliness. He’s smiling at the shopkeepers now, sheepishly leaning his case against the counter before he turns and lays eyes on Wonwoo. Wonwoo could be imagining it, but for just a second, he thinks he sees a flash of trepidation on the other boy’s face - and then it’s gone as quickly as it came, because the boy is grinning at Wonwoo again and maybe his heart is beating just a little faster.

 

“I’ve seen you around before,” the boy starts, but Wonwoo cuts him off just as quickly.

 

“Oh, have you?” Wonwoo retorts sarcastically, turning back to the shelves. If this is someone that knows him, knows _of_ him, chances are he has heard about Wonwoo’s ‘setbacks’. That’s the word he’s heard used most commonly by his professors to discuss him, whispered by his coursemates as they glance over him, concerned and unseeing all at the same time. He’s tired of being branded by his failures, of people looking at him and immediately knowing that he’s the poster boy for the gifted kid who burnt out too early and can barely bring himself to be around his instrument. Especially by strangers, like that somehow makes it worse. Everyone in his circle already knows, but then the news spreads like the plague and he’s to be avoided in case of contagion.

 

“You’re not even going to ask for my name?” the boy asks, still smiling somehow despite Wonwoo’s rudeness. In fact, he doesn’t look the slightest bit taken back, which makes Wonwoo think he expected his hostile response. Instead, it looks like Wonwoo’s just played his way into the jaws of a beast he doesn’t know the first thing about.

 

“Should I?” is all Wonwoo says in reply, arching an eyebrow. If this really is a hunt, the way he thinks it is, it might be best to start backing away now, before he gets pounced on and torn to shreds. He takes an involuntary step back.

 

“Kwon Soonyoung,” the boy says, reaching out a hand. “At your service,” and Wonwoo cannot do anything but stare for a moment before he gently slides his hand into Soonyoung’s, limp and clammy. Soonyoung’s hands are warm, and Wonwoo can feel the callousness of his palm rubbing against Wonwoo’s much more smooth one. He doesn’t know what to make of this contrast.

 

“You’re Jeon Wonwoo, right?” Soonyoung prompts, redacting his hand, and Wonwoo is very suddenly confronted by the loss of warmth. He nods his head anyway, continuing to eye Soonyoung warily.

 

“I’ve got a proposal for you,” Soonyoung continues cheerily, clearly not noticing how cautious Wonwoo’s being. He has no idea that Wonwoo’s just biding his time, hackles raised, until he can run out of the bookshop and to safety, away from strangers with rough hands and million-watt smiles.

 

“And what might that be?” Wonwoo demands, the coldness of his own tone surprising even to himself.

 

“Everyone keeps saying you’ve lost something. I don’t think you have. You were one of the best pianists at this school, and I don’t see that as a capability that you can just misplace,” Soonyoung blurts out all at once, and immediately Wonwoo can already feel the hot, stupid shame crawling its way up the back of his neck, his ears ringing with the echo of the past tense Soonyoung had used. Outside, distantly, the rain is still falling.

 

“So you’re awfully mouthy _and_ you still haven’t told me what your proposal is,” Wonwoo manages, burying his hands in his pockets so Soonyoung won’t be able to see his clenched fists that are trembling ever so slightly. It should make him angry, the way Soonyoung thinks he can just make these assumptions about Wonwoo. And yet, he feels more shame than anger, more drained of battery than ready for a fight. Maybe because as much as he hates it, there was an element of truth to the statement. Perhaps that’s the worst part of it all, to be completely unable to confront this essential part of himself.

 

Soonyoung ignores his rudeness, yet again. Wonwoo quirks an eyebrow at this, surprised at how much he is willing to tolerate.

 

“If you’ll have me - we should go on a treasure hunt. Do a bunch of things that are close to your heart to bring back old feelings. Maybe you’ll find what you’ve lost sight of, just as long as you don’t stop looking,” Soonyoung finishes, looking at Wonwoo expectantly, like he thinks Wonwoo will fall for something so thoroughly ridiculous.

 

“Who put you up to this?” Wonwoo demands suddenly, and Soonyoung’s face falls so quickly that he almost feels guilty for being the cause of it, but shakes himself back to reality. He does not know Soonyoung. Soonyoung does not know Wonwoo, as much as he would like to think he does. They don’t owe each other anything. It isn’t Wonwoo’s responsibility to keep him smiling, even though he has what Wonwoo thinks may just be the prettiest smile he’s ever seen. “Was it Mingyu?”

 

“Wh - Wonwoo, nobody put me up to this,” Soonyoung’s saying softly and he’s frowning now but Wonwoo can only hear the rain coming down outside. It’s gotten heavier in the time that they’ve been inside.

 

“Then why?” Wonwoo demands, furrowing his brow. It’s a little sad, the way he finds it nearly inconceivable to believe that someone would willingly go out of their way to help him on a seemingly fruitless task. He’d thought that by this point everyone had accepted him as a lost cause, and his every interaction with them just built up to a series of ceremonials, to say goodbye because he cannot stay in their world anymore. Not when he has become so colourless, so lacking in every sense of the word.

 

In response, though, Soonyoung only shrugs.

 

“Because I’m interested. It doesn’t seem right, to have you let go so easily. You don’t want to let go, right?” Soonyoung asks, tilting his head to stare at Wonwoo. He’s acting like he knows Wonwoo again, like he really cares. It’s terribly disconcerting.

 

“You don’t know me,” Wonwoo blurts, the words coming out before he can stop them because apparently his mouth is another appendage he’s lost control over. He blushes a little at his admission, scuffing the toe of his boots against the concrete floor like it’ll magically open up a pit to swallow him whole and effectively stop this conversation.

 

“I’d like to,” Soonyoung says quietly, and Wonwoo’s head shoots up to meet Soonyoung’s level gaze, calm and unmoving. He doesn’t look like a man with something to lose. Maybe, in that way, he and Wonwoo aren’t so different. Maybe they’re both far gone enough that an adventure with a stranger sounds more promising than school and grades and the dull thrum that their instruments have become. At worst, Wonwoo wastes his time on this treasure hunt turned wild goose chase and can decisively conclude that he’ll always exist in this state of numbness with no way out. At best, he wastes his time and can decisively conclude that he’ll always exist in this state of numbness with no way out, but he’ll exist with a new friend.

 

“Fine,” Wonwoo finally concedes with a sigh. Soonyoung perks up almost instantaneously, his slightly guarded exterior entirely discarded. Wonwoo doesn’t like the way his heart picks up at the slight sparkle in Soonyoung’s eyes. “Where to first?”

  
**ii. if you let me, here’s what i’ll do / i’ll take care of you**

 

“Blue Jazz?” Soonyoung reads aloud, his face glowing in the blue light of the neon sign. Out of the corner of his eye, Wonwoo can see Soonyoung’s nose ring glinting every time he twitches his nose. He’s been doing that an awful lot the whole way here - nearly every time Wonwoo says something he finds displeasing, he scrunches his nose in distaste. One might even say it’s an endearing habit. In the two hours that they’ve known each other, Wonwoo has learnt that Soonyoung is made of around 50 adorable quirks, and is probably the most stubbornly persistent person he’s ever met.

 

“This is it,” Wonwoo affirms, striding towards the entrance of the slouchy building, its 2-storeys looking so haphazardly placed that it always makes Wonwoo think the second one was just dumped there as an architectural afterthought. Soonyoung is still trailing behind him hesitantly, like he’s been invited into the mouth of a beast. Just as they’re about to step foot inside, Wonwoo feels a small fist on the back of his leather jacket, pulling him backwards.

 

“Are you sure this place is safe?” Soonyoung whispers, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. He keeps looking around the shadows like something’s going to jump out at him, fangs bared, and eat him whole. It’s a bit of a weird contrast, though, Wonwoo has to admit - Soonyoung with his purple hair and flowy flannel and perfectly tapered pants in this dodgy-looking bar. At least Wonwoo’s dressed for the occasion, having ditched his usual colour-blocked windbreaker for a leather jacket and scuffed Doc Martens. The only thing that serves to soften his appearance are his glasses, dainty and round on the edge of his nose.

 

“I come here all the time, of course it’s fine,” he says dismissively, waving Soonyoung in after him.

 

The interior of the bar is much more cozy than its facade, with its patterned sofas strewn with afghans, and a few high tables towards the back that gives listeners a decent vantage point over the stage. There are ornate lamps overhead, casting yellow triangles of light onto the wall that break the overall dimness of the bar. Wonwoo expertly navigates them towards one of the higher tables in the back, closer to the bar itself.

 

“Why do you come here so much?” is the first thing Soonyoung asks once they are comfortably seated and Wonwoo has become well-acquainted with his gin and tonic.

 

Wonwoo pauses at the question, fiddling with the straw of his drink. Finally, he answers: “I guess I just like jazz,” and goes right back to letting his eyes wander over the space around them.

 

“Why?” Soonyoung asks again, and Wonwoo laughs, but it comes out barking and low in his subtle discomfort.

 

“You’re asking an awful lot of questions,” Wonwoo muses, leaning back in his seat.

 

“That’s the only way to get answers,” Soonyoung quips back, folding his arms. Wonwoo makes a humming noise that could be interpreted as either agreement or apathy, but doesn’t continue.

 

The music is swimming its way around them, a soft, steady beat in the background that nips at their ankles before ducking away again. The piano is quiet and soft, the base melody for the bursts of trumpeted notes. It’s such that they can still hold what barely qualifies as conversation, Soonyoung with his endless questions and Wonwoo with his non-existent answers.

 

“Hey, I’ve got a question for you: why me?” Wonwoo finally says, twirling his straw between his fingers. He’s sat facing forward in his chair, such that in the poor lighting of the bar, Soonyoung can only really see the slope of his nose, and the curve of his jawline.

 

Soonyoung huffs at this, twiddling his thumbs. “Didn’t I already answer that?”

 

“Give me something better,” Wonwoo offers, fixing his eyes on Soonyoung, who shifts uncomfortably under the weight of his gaze.

 

“Fine. I was curious. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d seen you around before, but you’re always running away. Did you know you’re in my Listening To Music lecture? You probably don’t, but that’s where I’ve always seen you, and you’re always the first to leave. And then today, I saw you sprinting from practice at top speed. You just seem like you hate all of this and I just - I’m a sucker for a good project,” Soonyoung confesses, eyes boring holes into the table. Wonwoo’s been quiet throughout his entire explanation, the only indicator of his attention being his head tilted slightly towards Soonyoung. At one point, it looks like he wants to object, but he ends up sinking into silence again.

 

“I’m a project to you?” Wonwoo repeats, and Soonyoung immediately flinches backwards at the sudden sharpness his tone carries. Instinctually, regret stirs in his stomach, but Wonwoo pushes it down. Soonyoung has been exceedingly kind thus far, filling the silence of their bus ride over with chatter and curious musings when he senses that Wonwoo might not be that much of a talker. Wonwoo, of course, appreciates the effort, appreciates how quickly Soonyoung adapts to him without a second of hesitation. It becomes easy to get caught up in the moment, though,  and he has to remind himself once again that they’re just two people who are at a common intersection. Neither of them have any debts to settle with one another.

 

However, to have it made known that you’re a project instead of a person is not a good feeling. So yes, Wonwoo thinks, he has the right to call Soonyoung out on this.

 

Soonyoung raises his hands in defense. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry,” he manages to get out, hurriedly pushing out his hands again when Wonwoo opens his mouth to interrupt. “I just mean that I’d like to help. I don’t like seeing others struggle, not when I know something can be done about it,” he explains, biting down on his bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have called you a project, though. I’m sorry,” Soonyoung finishes, pushing his glass of Coke away. “I can leave if you want,” he says finally, so softly that Wonwoo almost misses it.

 

“You don’t have to leave,” Wonwoo answers, but already he’s looking anywhere but at Soonyoung. “I don’t like being called a project. I’m a person. Just because you know some of what’s wrong doesn’t give you the right to treat me like I’m some kind of broken toy that needs fixing,” Wonwoo continues, deadly quiet. Soonyoung hangs his head, before he leans back in his stool and sighs.

 

“You know, usually I would pick a fight if someone were to criticize me like that,” Soonyoung starts, and Wonwoo raises an eyebrow in a silent challenge almost immediately. “But,” Soonyoung continues, “I was wrong. And I’m sorry. Don’t write me off just yet. Please,” he admits, and Wonwoo doesn’t miss the pleading tone in his voice. There’s something more to this, the nagging voice inside Wonwoo’s head claims. There’s something fishy about this whole proposal that Soonyoung isn’t telling him. Sooner or later, Wonwoo’s going to find out exactly what it is. Two can play at this game, he thinks. For now though, he shrugs casually.

 

“Fine. But you pull that shit again and we’re scrapping this,” Wonwoo warns, his gaze looming and heavy on Soonyoung. When Soonyoung concedes, he settles back and clinks the ice in his glass. “To answer your question; jazz is my favourite genre. I prefer the freedom of it,” Wonwoo confesses suddenly, letting his gaze wander back to the stage. Soonyoung waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he eyes the fluttering hands of the pianist on stage and wonders when exactly his own hands gave up on him - as if the problem was the heaviness of his hands, the clumsiness of his fingers, and not the fog in his brain that denies all rationality and instruction.

 

“Then why don’t you study jazz piano instead of the classical course?” Soonyoung asks, frowning.

 

“Oh don’t get me wrong, I love jazz. I just don’t want to study it. That always ruins things,” Wonwoo elaborates, sipping from his glass. “I wanted to devote my life to the piano, without having any of its liveliness taken away,” he murmurs, watching the pianist on the stage as the words leave his mouth. Tonight’s performer is one of his favourites - Seokmin, he’d introduced himself as - a self-taught jazz pianist. No formal music education besides being made to take piano lessons as a child, till Grade 5. Then he hit a block, decided he hated the stuffiness and forced prestige associated with formal music exams, and now holds his own gigs. Wonwoo envies him. “Of course, that’s impossible.”

 

“Just because music was turned into a discipline for you doesn’t mean it’s lifeless, though,” Soonyoung pipes up, effectively interrupting Wonwoo’s steadily spiralling train of thought.

 

“Then how do you explain the place I’m in?” Wonwoo demands, fixing Soonyoung with a hard stare. It’s got no bite behind it though, Soonyoung can tell. If anything, Wonwoo just looks helpless. It’s as if he’s pleading with Soonyoung to give him an answer, some kind of rationality to explain the dodgy nature of creative burnouts and depression and why he can’t seem to bring himself to do anything that’s right in the eyes of everyone else, let alone his own. Soonyoung stays silent, running his fingers up and down the condensation of his empty glass.

 

“You don’t have an answer for me,” Wonwoo says, but it comes out as more of a statement than a question. Soonyoung can hear the disappointment bleeding through his tone, flat and fizzled out. He hates how it sounds, passive and resigned to being a lost cause when he knows Wonwoo is so much more than this pathetic shell.

 

“I’ve already told you what I think, though,” Soonyoung reminds him, his leg bouncing up and down wildly. Things can’t end now. They were finally getting somewhere, somewhere that was real and painful and what could be more important than that? It’s imperceptible to imagine a life without pain, because the pain is so often accompanied by the happy, by the soft, by the kind, and by the pretty. A life cannot be considered a life in the absence of these things, and Soonyoung will be damned if he lets another person slip into the inviting lull of numbness; let alone someone who clearly feels as deeply as Wonwoo does. There’s a fire there, he’s sure of it. No one comes into the world seeing it only in one shade of beige, let alone musicians. After all, what was music but the technicolour palette of life transcribed into sound?

 

“What, that I’ve lost something? You really believe that?” Wonwoo says, his lips curled into an ugly snarl. It twists his features, turns the softness of them into sharp, contorted lines that Soonyoung can’t seem to reconcile with the boy he met in the bookshop. “You wanna know what I think?”

 

“I think you can’t lose something you never had,” Wonwoo spits out, sliding off of his chair. “I was never passionate about music because it wasn’t a choice I had. Sure, I played the piano once or twice and that put the idea into my parents’ minds, but it wasn’t my call to make,” he continues, and he’s leaving without a thought for all the broken hearts in his wake. He thinks his is the only broken heart around town; being trampled on by the world and the cocktail of chemicals in his brain that refuse to bend to his will. He can’t, or doesn’t see the broken hearts of the world around him, all of the people that found solace in his music who are now greeted by an empty room and a piano collecting dust.

 

“But at a point - you did,” Soonyoung says softly, and for some reason, this is enough to bring Wonwoo to a halt.

 

“What?”

 

“If you never liked music, you would’ve never been drawn to playing it in the first place. All your parents did was push you towards something they thought you might like. You can’t blame them for wanting the best for you, and you can’t keep crucifying yourself either,” Soonyoung continues determinedly, and by this point Wonwoo is frozen in place, entirely out of words. Behind them, the piano flows interrupted, and a shiver runs through the air.

 

                                                                     /

 

“So now what?” Wonwoo asks, seated comfortably on the barstool again. He’s calmed down by now, looking a little more like the uncertain boy Soonyoung first approached in the bookshop.

 

“Word of advice?” Soonyoung offers, and Wonwoo shrugs, gesturing for Soonyoung to continue as he drains his glass. “Creativity is borne from experience. If you don’t have experiences - things that’ve hurt you  made you happier than you’ve ever been - then you can’t create. And worst of all, if you don’t let yourself feel those things, no matter how ugly they can be; well, then it’s enough to destroy even the most passionate of souls.”

 

“Getting philosophical there, Soonyoung?” Wonwoo teases, raising an eyebrow. This quip has a blush creeping up Soonyoung’s cheeks, and Wonwoo would be lying if he said that didn’t please him. “You’re right, though,” Wonwoo finally says, looking away. He’s been doing that an awful lot, as soon as they’d started talking seriously - avoiding eye contact, like if anyone looked at him directly they’d be looking right through him, not just at him.

 

Soonyoung just sends Wonwoo what he hopes is a small, comforting smile in response. It’s not like he can say much else, given the way they were acquainted.

 

“Then - how do I make it better?” Wonwoo asks suddenly, innocent and defeated in the same way that a child might ask their mother how they can put a shattered vase back together. He is drawing circles around the ring of condensation his glass has left soaked through on the table, refusing to look at Soonyoung again.

 

“That’s where the treasure hunt comes in,” Soonyoung says, a glint of mischief in his eyes. Wonwoo snaps his head up to look at him, the confusion evident on his features.

 

“Where do we go first though?”

 

“You tell me.”

 

**iii. and although i was burning, you're the only light / only if for a night**

 

The next morning finds Wonwoo being repeatedly being pelted by a pillow. The sun is bright against his eyelids, and for just an instant he thinks Soonyoung was a just a desperate mirage of his mind and everything is exactly the same level of dull as before. Saviours do not come in the shape of oversized floral flannels and gleaming facial jewellery, Wonwoo thinks, eyes open but unfocused. Not that Soonyoung is his saviour, but it’s a little hard to think about the events of yesterday without seeing them as some kind of great cosmic joke on his life that he’ll never understand. The pillow comes swinging into his face, again.

 

Sitting up, all he sees is Jihoon before him, holding the pillow aloft like a weapon. Mingyu is sat behind him, with the nerve to look at least slightly sheepish. All Jihoon says is “Sorry, didn’t know how else to wake you,” before he drops the pillow onto Wonwoo’s foot with a soft thump.

 

“How’d you get in here?” Wonwoo demands, wincing at the way his voice goes a little higher towards the end.

 

“Technicalities,” Jihoon dismisses, waving his hand. “We heard you hung out with Kwon Soonyoung yesterday,” he says, fixing Wonwoo with one of his unreadable hard stares. “What’s going on there?”

 

“Nothing?” Wonwoo says, only it comes out like a question because how does he even begin to answer that when he himself has no idea what him and Soonyoung are up to? It’s not like ‘Oh, Soonyoung and I are going to go on a manic pixie adventure straight out of a YA novel until I find my passion for ~music and life~ again’ is an acceptable answer to make them _not_ worry about him.

 

Of course, when it comes to Jihoon and Mingyu, it’s all about worry. Mingyu will run himself into the ground turning butterflies into bats and it gives Wonwoo some relief to know that Jihoon will be there to balance him out. Jihoon, unlike Mingyu, isn’t the kind of person to be openly affectionate - everything he does or says is in the implication. He’s good for Mingyu like that, makes him quiet. Wonwoo has lost count of the amount of times he’s seen Mingyu go off on rambling tangents, his hands a blur, only to have Jihoon suddenly reach out to clasp one of Mingyu’s hands between both of his own. Wonwoo is suddenly very aware of how cold his hands are. “Did you come here just to interrogate me about my social life?”

 

“I don’t believe you,” Jihoon says flatly, plopping himself onto Wonwoo’s bed. Mingyu, on the other hand, has decided that now is a good time for him to speak. Even before anything comes out of his mouth, Wonwoo has already gone through all 5 stages of grief just so he can greet whatever nonsense Mingyu has to say with his guard up.

 

“We just want you to be careful, hyung. Haven’t you heard what people say about him?” Mingyu says, and the pitying look in his eyes lights a strange, unfriendly fire in Wonwoo.

 

“He’s not gonna hurt me, you know,” Wonwoo scoffs, throwing the covers away from him. “And I don’t need you guys to act like my fucking guardian angels. I can take care of myself,” he snaps, turning to lodge his feet into one of his sneakers. He sees the hurt written across Mingyu’s face, open and unabashed, and has the decency to feel at least a little bad. Mingyu’s not a bad guy - Wonwoo knows this. He bakes when he feels stressed. He likes working with his hands. He sometimes says stupid things, but those stupid things always come from a good place. He’s clumsy but loving, but right now Wonwoo is far too full of sharp angles and fresh hurt to accommodate that. That doesn’t make it right for him to lash out, though.

 

“Look, I’m sorry for snapping. I just had a weird day,” Wonwoo resigns, sighing as he finishes tying his laces.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jihoon asks, raising an eyebrow. And again, he finds himself stuck.

 

“Soonyoung made me an offer,” he says, hoping this will suffice. Of course, it doesn’t. Nothing gets past the worried eyes of his friends, not since they were rudely made aware of Wonwoo’s predicament. He prefers to call it that, anyway. Burnout sounds too much like something that will pass, and depression sounds too permanent. Predicament is the perfect in-between; it keeps the scales steady in a place where things have not taken on the bedside manner of the terminal, and creates the imaginary idea that there is a path to improvement, even though he’d stopped searching for one a long time ago.

 

“A deal? What’s he got you doing? Is it dangerous?” Mingyu questions, and he’s got his Worried Mother stance on again - furrowed eyebrows, hunched forwards, hands clasped and constantly wriggling. That forms another thing he’s always found a little endearing about Mingyu and Jihoon, when they’re together. Mingyu’s always been an incredibly intense person - it used to throw Wonwoo off when they’d first met, the way Mingyu looked at him and Wonwoo could tell Mingyu was really looking _at_ him, seeing all his little discrepancies and ticks instead of looking through him. Jihoon, on the other hand, mirrors that intensity in the same way the atmosphere buzzes with electricity as a thunderstorm approaches. They fit well together, Wonwoo thinks.

 

“It’s not dangerous,” Wonwoo says, looking past Jihoon and Mingyu, focusing his gaze on the gathering clouds on the horizon for a moment. “Just unconventional,” he adds, straightening his ratty t-shirt and tugging on one of his windbreakers to cover it up.

 

“That still doesn’t tell us anything and you know it,” Jihoon says dryly, crossing his arms. Wonwoo winces. Of course, he should know by now that Mingyu and Jihoon are the last people in the world who will willingly endure his non-answers and ducking questions, but old habits die hard.

 

“I know. I just can’t explain it right now, alright? I don’t wanna talk about it,” Wonwoo sighs, slinging his backpack up onto his shoulder. “I’m gonna be late for class, so,” he adds pointedly, motioning for Mingyu and Jihoon to leave. Jihoon looks him up and down one last time before he disappears through the doorway, but Mingyu lingers.

 

“I know you don’t feel like talking about it now, but when you do - we’ll be here,” Mingyu says softly, tilting his head to gesture at Jihoon. It makes Wonwoo feel too big for his body, like all his doubts and everything he doesn’t understand about the situation he’s in will come spilling out of his chest if he opens his mouth. Instead of unleashing that endless dam, he nods, smiles tightly at Mingyu, and claps him on the arm as he passes.

 

Mingyu’s still looking at him like he might fall apart any second. Wonwoo turns away from the intensity of his gaze.

 

                                                      /

 

It’s been 2 weeks since that night at Blue Jazz. Wonwoo hasn’t seen Soonyoung since, barely able to catch glimpses of him on campus as he jumps from task to task and Wonwoo just seems to stagnate. At best, they’ve exchanged a text every now and then, mainly Soonyoung sending Wonwoo random updates throughout his day, and acting like they’ve always been friends.

 

At first, Wonwoo is hesitant and closed-off, giving Soonyoung the most bare-bones answers he can think of. As days go by, though, Wonwoo finds Soonyoung’s virtual presence growing on him. He pulls his phone out randomly several times throughout the day at the possibility of having felt it vibrate in his pocket, bearing a message from Soonyoung that he doesn’t want to miss. The few times that it turned out to be phantom notifications, Wonwoo frowns, and wonders when he became so fond of Soonyoung.

 

And then, finally, there comes a miracle of an empty day, and they decide to meet.

 

                                                                   /

 

The rain is just slowing to a stop by the time Wonwoo gets off the bus, right outside his old school. The bus pulls away with a loud sloshing noise as it drives through a puddle, leaving Wonwoo alone with the silence of the night, punctuated only by the sleek sliding of car tires against wet asphalt. There’s something familiar and nostalgic about this kind of scenario, the tranquility after a storm. It may always be raining in this town, but the magical quality of the atmosphere has never been lost on Wonwoo. Living all his life in a place like this, a place that always seems to be drowning - most people would grow tired of it. His father sighs when it rains, grimaces before opening an umbrella and complaining about how his new shoes will be ruined before his meeting. People on the street tap their feet and snort impatiently as they stand under shelters, waiting for the storm to pass. Wonwoo’s the kind of person who’ll talk with quiet conviction about dancing in the rain, but will never let the tip of his shoe get wet.

 

That is how it seems to go with a lot of things, anyway.

 

He wanders the perimeter of the school, occasionally checking his phone to see if Soonyoung has texted him. Wonwoo had chosen to meet here tonight, after Soonyoung made the suggestion that they go back to where things began, significant places. This is as close to significance as Wonwoo can get, he supposes. It’s a middle school whose skeleton now stands brittle in the midst of overgrown fields, its’ facade peeling away with every wash of rain. Just looking at it makes Wonwoo feel a weird kind of empty, not the kind of emptiness you experience with absence, but more like there was never anything there to begin with and maybe a better word for it would be hollow.

 

“Wonwoo!” Soonyoung calls, and Wonwoo spins on his heel, nearly slipping on the wetness of the pavement. Soonyoung reaches out to catch him and Wonwoo finds himself clinging onto his forearms for dear life, sneakers sliding against the slick path with the clumsiness of a newborn deer completely incapable of walking. Somewhere in the back of his mind, past his survival instincts and pure panic, he registers how warm Soonyoung is. Against Wonwoo’s cheek, Soonyoung’s heart thuds with the steady reminder of his presence.

 

Wonwoo wrenches himself out of Soonyoung’s grip immediately, muttering apologies and pulling the sleeves of his windbreaker down over his knuckles, as if covering himself up a little more will erase an instant of closeness.

 

“No worries,” Soonyoung replies cheerfully, clearly not noticing the miniscule crisis Wonwoo was having. If anyone were to ask him, Wonwoo would swear that he most certainly _did not_ gravitate towards Soonyoung. He tells himself that it’s just cold out and Soonyoung is warm and a welcome contrast. Maybe he also looks a little too good in his cropped sweater that ends right at the hem of his jeans that are far too tight around his thighs to be considered holy. Wonwoo, of course, is not thinking about this.

 

He straightens then, and some traitorous part of his mind notes that in the muted glow of the street lamps, there’s a smudged halo around Soonyoung’s purple head of hair. His saviour, Wonwoo had remembered thinking that morning. A cosmic joke that he cannot stop himself from playing along with.

 

“Is this it?” Soonyoung asks, eagerly scanning the outside of the school. “Looks haunted,” he remarks, pressing himself up against the chain-link fence that secures the perimeter of the school. His fingers are curled around the stretches of wire, and in the midst of thinking about how much that must hurt, Wonwoo realizes that Soonyoung’s hands are decidedly bare of jewellery, in contrast to the rest of him. Besides his nose ring, about 50 ear piercings and a delicate bracelet, his fingers are noticeably empty of rings.

 

“You don’t wear any rings?” Wonwoo asks suddenly, his eyes still on Soonyoung’s hands.

 

“Ah, no,” Soonyoung replies, uncurling his fingers and stuffing them into his pockets. “They get in the way when I play the violin, you know,” he continues, offering Wonwoo a tight smile. There exists a strange tension between them now, and Wonwoo can’t be sure if it’s due to his weird question that definitely indicated that he was staring at Soonyoung’s hands, or if because Soonyoung’s hiding something. He hopes that it’s the former.

 

“How are we getting in?” Soonyoung asks suddenly, and the moment is dispelled into the damp night air.

 

“I was gonna say we’d climb in. School’s been shut for years, and I doubt the lock on the fence will budge anyway,” Wonwoo states, tilting his head at the extremely rusty padlock hanging off the fence. Soonyoung grimaces at it in response. It looks comical on him, the way his features all scrunch together and make him look just a little like a hamster.

 

“Gimme a boost then,” Soonyoung proposes, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater. Wonwoo just stands there, gaping at him.

 

“Why do _I_ have to give _you_ a boost?” Wonwoo groans, already getting down on one knee. He frowns athowhis trousers feel against the wet pavement, the bits of gravel already starting to stick.

 

“Because you’re taller than me and you’re already in position, I may as well put you to use,” Soonyoung says, shrugging as he puts one of his very fancy, very wet shoes on Wonwoo’s pant leg. Wonwoo would be disgusted, except now Soonyoung’s butt has followed his leg and is _dangerously close_ to Wonwoo’s face. He then comes to the extremely unfortunate realization that tight jeans do him no favours, and that Kwon Soonyoung has a very cute butt.

 

The world is deeply, deeply unfair.

 

With a grunt, Soonyoung swings himself over the top of the fence, landing gracefully on the other side with his arms outstretched. The position reminds Wonwoo of a gymnast, eternally elegant as they stick the landing, beaming as the crowd cheers. Wonwoo, on the other hand, has the pleasure of using his extremely weak core to haul himself up the chain link fence, clinging onto it for dear life. Soonyoung, ever the helper, does nothing but laugh and take photos of Wonwoo using a flash that’s too bright and blinds him. For posterity, he says later, his mouth pulled into a cheeky grin.

 

For now, though, Wonwoo lands on the damp ground in a heap of limbs and winces at the specks of mud that have now stuck themselves onto his trousers. “How’d you not even get the slightest bit dirty?” he asks Soonyoung as he very desperately tries to scratch the mud off.

 

“I used to dance, so I’m used to doing acrobatic stuff like that, I guess,” Soonyoung replies, only it’s so much more vulnerable than Wonwoo has ever heard him speak and maybe there really is a story behind Soonyoung too. Again, Wonwoo gets the distinct feeling that maybe this whole adventure isn’t just about him. Despite the rushed nature of their companionship, he finds himself drawn to Soonyoung, picking up intricate details about him and storing them for later - the very fact that he assumes there will even be a ‘later’ with them should scare him, but for once he feels nothing but curiosity.

 

Still, though, he keeps his questions to himself as they cross the threshold of the school building, and into darkness.

 

                                                                         /

 

“Is this place haunted?” Soonyoung wonders aloud for the second time that night, and Wonwoo rolls his eyes.

 

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t believe in ghosts,” Wonwoo responds, and Soonyoung gapes at him.

 

“You don’t believe in ghosts? I can’t believe we’re friends,” Soonyoung huffs, walking ahead of Wonwoo.

 

“We’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks,” Wonwoo reminds him, snorting at his dramatic antics. “Why, do you believe in ghosts?” Soonyoung nods solemnly, his eyes darting down the corridor.

 

“I never believed in ghosts, until I came face-to-face with one,” Soonyoung whispers, lowering his voice dramatically. Wonwoo raises an eyebrow, thoroughly unconvinced. “It was late one night in my parents’ house, and I saw a little girl in a Victorian nightgown at my doorway. I was just a kid, but I knew. It just felt so raw...so extreme…” he continues, trailing off towards the end. Wonwoo can’t help but be completely drawn in, leaning forwards just to hear what Soonyoung has to say next. He may not believe in ghosts, but unexplained things always tend to draw a morbid kind of fascination, no matter who you are. “Now, I’m joined only by you, in this haunted school, where we’ll have to spend an entire night locked in - from dusk until dawn,” Soonyoung says quietly, linking arms with Wonwoo. It’s only then that Wonwoo realizes where he’s heard this before.

 

“You just paraphrased the entire stupid intro from Ghost Adventures,” Wonwoo complains, wriggling out of Soonyoung’s grasp and whacking him on the arm. Soonyoung lets out a little bubble of mischievous laughter, dodging Wonwoo’s blows.

 

“It was worth a try,” he sing-songs, ducking under Wonwoo’s arm again. “Wait, how’d you know it was from Ghost Adventures?” Soonyoung questions, fixing Wonwoo with a glint in his eye that makes him think Soonyoung knows _exactly_ how Wonwoo recognized it.

 

“I...had a phase,” Wonwoo allows, continuing to stride forward, very pointedly not looking at Soonyoung.

 

“A phase?” Soonyoung continues innocently, effortlessly keeping up with Wonwoo’s pace. This is a very, very long corridor, Wonwoo thinks.

 

“I used to watch it a lot when I was 16,” Wonwoo finally admits, swatting at Soonyoung when he leans in too close, still grinning like a cheshire cat. Belatedly, Wonwoo notices that when Soonyoung smiles, his cheeks go all round and smushed-up. It might just be the most adorable thing he’s ever had the pleasure of witnessing.

 

Maybe Wonwoo is starting to like Soonyoung with his playfulness and unbound optimism a lot more than he’s letting on, and maybe he’d like to get to know him more.

 

However, these thoughts will produce no clean ending because Wonwoo is still bleeding and crooked; no good for boys like Soonyoung, who believe in ghosts and will run out to dance in the rain, while he stays beneath awnings and watches the world go by without him.

 

                                                 /

 

Eventually, they tire of wandering the halls and Soonyoung’s god-awful Zak Bagans impressions. Despite the humour that Soonyoung keeps trying to indulge in to try and lighten the atmosphere, Wonwoo can’t help but let his eyes wander into the empty skeletons of classrooms. Being in places like this always brings about a strange air, like reality has stopped and something more viscous, more shadow, has seeped into its place. The night covers everything with a dense blanket that makes time itself still, and it feels like the whole world has shut its eyes and is taking one deep breath, all together.

 

The chairs in some of the classrooms have barely been pushed in. If Wonwoo closes his eyes and thinks far back enough, he can almost imagine the throngs of students rushing to get out of school on their last day. He wonders if they knew it was to be their last day here, on a campus that would slowly languish and hollow out with nothing left but ever-growing grass and the ghosts of days long past.

 

The auditorium, unfortunately, seems to be the worst place of them all. It stands at the corner of the second floor corridor, a dark, gaping maw stretched open and more than ready to devour. It reaches a shadowy hand towards the two of them, and Wonwoo’s eyes are automatically drawn to the infinity of darkness that stretches uninvitingly past the auditorium doors.

 

Soonyoung has frozen instinctively beside Wonwoo, his small hands now unbelievably cold against Wonwoo’s bare wrist. For a moment, Soonyoung feels just as ghostly as everything else in this building and it takes all of Wonwoo’s strength to not wrench his hand from his grip and go tearing out of the compound, away from the spirits of the things he once knew that seem to still be alive inside of him.

 

“If you’re scared, we can turn back,” Wonwoo offers kindly, but he starts when he turns only to see that Soonyoung is trembling like a leaf beside him. It’s a disturbing contrast to the lightheartedness he’d exuded earlier, the speed at which it’d fizzled out only to be replaced by this unseeing fear. When Soonyoung makes no reply, Wonwoo turns to him, examining his face. “Soonyoung, what is it?” he asks firmly, and thankfully, his voice knocks Soonyoung out of his strange trance.

 

Soonyoung shakes his head a little, like he hasn’t fully processed where he is and Wonwoo wonders where he had gone in those moments.

 

“Sorry, I just...you’re going to think I’m weird,” Soonyoung says eventually, pushing his slightly sweaty bangs back. Wonwoo’s eyes attentively follow the action, the way Soonyoung’s fingers spread ever so slightly at the top of his head and his bangs fan out only to flop back down over his forehead eventually. Instinctively, his tongue runs over his lips. There’s a weirdly electrifying energy in the air tonight, turning things away from what they usually are and thrusting them into darker boundaries. Wonwoo isn’t exempt from its influence.

 

“I think that comes with the territory,” Wonwoo answers lightly, rocking on his heels. Soonyoung still hasn’t answered him.

 

“The energy in there didn’t feel good,” Soonyoung finally says, tilting his head towards the yawning mouth of the auditorium. If Wonwoo were to step back just a little, the darkness of the entrance could easily clamp its’ jaws around the winding corridor and swallow it whole, Wonwoo and Soonyoung be damned.

 

“It felt unkind,” Soonyoung continues. Wonwoo thinks ‘unkind’ is probably the most spot-on description there was when it came to things like this. Not words with fangs like ‘demonic’, and not as childishly sullen as words like ‘unfriendly’. No, unkind was the best way to say it. There isn’t a single memory in this place that didn’t grow teeth, and Wonwoo has the scars to prove it.

 

He steps forward into the auditorium anyway, though. Soonyoung’s still standing behind him, unmoving. It’s hard to explain, but as Wonwoo’s standing with his chest open towards the auditorium with Soonyoung’s hand clasped firmly in his, he ends up pulling him towards the auditorium. In some weird twist of fate, he has made Wonwoo recklessly brave tonight, brave in a way he never knew he could be. They head on into the darkness, hands still firmly clasped together - Soonyoung running cold where Wonwoo finds himself burning - and they make their own light. That’s the way it has to be with things like this, it seems.

 

Wonwoo wouldn’t say he’s the kind of person to turn his heel on things he has been desperately chasing at the last minute just because they turn out to be frightening at the very end (which is why he lets their fangs grow in gradually, to make letting go that much easier) but this time is different. This time, it’s become a matter of his life and his music and boys who are kind enough to offer to try and pull him out from the waves that are endlessly crashing over his head. For once, Wonwoo wants a part in exorcising his own ghosts. Even if that means breaking and entering and deathly silent auditoriums and the memory of the softness of tinkling piano keys folding themselves into the walls around him.

 

                                                /

 

“So, what’s the story here?” Soonyoung tries to ask lightly, but it comes out strangled. It takes Wonwoo a second to realize that Soonyoung is still very much scared. In what he hopes is reassurance, he rubs circles into Soonyoung’s hand with his thumb, pressing their palms together and praying that Soonyoung will feel some of his wordless warmth.  

 

“I had my very first public recital here,” Wonwoo replies softly, his eyes running over the high ceilings of the auditorium, the decaying beams and the giant fans that came to a halt all those years ago. They’re nothing but homes for spiders now. “One of my teachers scouted me, because I kept sneaking into the music room after school to play on the grand piano,” Wonwoo continues, sighing at the memory of slanting orange rays of sun warming the empty corridors, and the scuffing of canvas sneakers on concrete floors as he tried his hardest to be quiet sneaking into the music wing.

 

“That’s adorable,” Soonyoung says, interrupting Wonwoo’s reminiscing. He’s shaking a little less now, more pressed up into Wonwoo’s side as they sit on the floor in a pile of limbs. This knowledge settles Wonwoo’s heart a little more, knowing Soonyoung’s more comfortable in memories of golden hours instead of jazz bars lit by neon lights and rotting buildings. Wonwoo, unfortunately, can’t say the same for himself. As peaceful as those memories of softer days may have been, there is only numbness now, caught in the state between tongue and taste. He’s been finding it harder to sink into pleasantries more and more often. He keeps finding his feet mapping now-familiar pathways to places just as jagged and broken as he thinks he is. Maybe that’s part of the problem, the way he‘s resolved himself to distance and letting the world swallow him whole instead of fighting back. Maybe that’s where he got lost. “How old were you?”

 

“10, maybe?” Wonwoo answers easily, leaning back on his palms. “They said I was a natural, ‘suited for music’,” he repeats, snorting in disbelief at the words. This, like almost everything else he does, is a front. Brushing them off as a silly, meaningless sentiments is the only way he can make it easier for himself to breathe, to not cave under the crushing pressure of the fact that for the longest time, those words had been his life. And coming from a teacher, from someone he respected, he believed in them wholeheartedly. He was a natural, and music is what he was meant to do. To stray from this path in favour of anything else would be nothing short of foolish, surely. He doesn’t know how to tell his younger self just how much of a naive fool he was, and that broken dreams will never piece themselves back together - so maybe avoid having dreams at all, just to be safe.

 

“Was that such a bad thing?” Soonyoung asks, snapping Wonwoo out of his somewhat self-deprecating cycle again. Distractedly, Wonwoo registers the dust of the floorboards pressing hard into his palms. “Did you not want to be praised?” Soonyoung asks, his voice echoing through the emptiness.

 

“I didn’t want to hope for too much,” Wonwoo replies hesitantly. It makes him feel a stupid, the way he’s so obviously holding himself back from something that could be worth so much more, if only he would let it. There’s no formula for the mysterious ways in which depression works, and even if he knows by logic that creativity has no expiration date, the murky depths of his mind are always ready to put that knowledge to the test. It pains him to have decided that these episodical darknesses will cast a shadow over the rest of his life, and he’ll never be able to create something good again. Or, even worse - that he needs to sink into the shadows to create something that can even begin to be considered worthy of being called art. After all, he’s more than familiar with the stories of the great musicians who became more famous after the tragic ways they had passed. He sees the way people seem to pounce on the torture of their lives and see all their art only in the light of their suffering, and not in terms of a life that was both lived and loved.

 

“Wow, was baby Wonwoo just as much of a pessimist as you are now?” Soonyoung jokes, letting out a laugh. “Isn’t it better to know you have some potential, rather than snuff it out immediately without even trying?” Soonyoung asks again, seriously this time, and the question hangs in the air for a minute.

 

“It’s worse to build your life around something you were told once only to have it crumble around you within a couple years,” Wonwoo replies quietly, his eyes unseeing.

 

“Nothing has crumbled around you, though,” Soonyoung replies just as quietly, pulling his weight off of Wonwoo’s shoulder so he can turn to face him. Not that that matters, given that all either of them can really see is the contours of their face highlighted in ghostly moonlight, and the glinting of their eyes. “You’re still here. Maybe you haven’t made another place for yourself yet, but that doesn’t lessen the value of where you are now,” Soonyoung adds, his voice taking on a much more determined edge than before.

 

“You don’t know that,” Wonwoo retorts, and he flinches at how harsh and defensive it comes out. Instinctively, he reaches up to cross his arms, feeling the granules of dust between his palms.

 

“And neither do you, so how do you explain that?” Soonyoung answers defiantly, his gaze not leaving Wonwoo’s. For a moment, they’re locked in that competition, unwilling to budge. Finally, Wonwoo wavers and sighs.

 

“I don’t know where I am now. And I don’t know how to justify that. It’s not like I feel lost either, like what you said. I just can’t do it,” Wonwoo finishes lamely, his cheeks burning in shame at how none of that came out right because words will never even begin to illustrate the yawning emptiness that seems to be eternally expanding inside him.

 

Soonyoung’s quiet for a second, and Wonwoo feels a creeping fear up his neck, like he’s somehow managed to actually convince the other that he’s a lost cause. Of course, Wonwoo cannot definitively say that isn’t what some primally self-sabotaging part of himself wanted from the beginning but - he’s come to like Soonyoung, in the little time that they have known each other. He finds himself looking forward to the little pings that signal a text from him, to pockets of time stolen in coffee shops and bakeries just plotting their ‘amazing race’. Most of all, though, he likes how Soonyoung no longer treats him like a broken toy that needs to be fixed. He’s seen that far too often, in the concerned eyes of some of his peers and the shaking heads of his student advisors that tell him what he needs without thinking of what it is he wants. Soonyoung treats him like a person that just needed a little bit of cheering up, and he’s just happy to go along for the ride. Soonyoung’s new and shiny in his life and Wonwoo doesn’t need to hold back around him the same way he would around Mingyu or Jihoon; that’s a relief he hasn’t felt in years. To let it go now would be for him to go back to suffocation, to let his future slowly deflate, and to be completely motionless in spite of it all.

 

“You don’t owe me an explanation right now,” Soonyoung says suddenly, the timbre of his voice startling Wonwoo. “And you definitely don’t need to give me a perfectly well-thought out answer to where you are now or why things are the way they are. Honestly, I don’t expect you to have perfectly psychoanalysed everything,” Soonyoung remarks. Wonwoo feels some of the tension slip from his shoulders.

 

“But what if I don’t have an answer, ever?” Wonwoo asks the ceiling, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

 

“Then you’ll get to live with the knowledge that at least you tried to find one, and that there are no easy answers to the kind of things you’re asking of yourself,” Soonyoung replies coolly, raising his eyebrow at Wonwoo. “Is that enough for you?”

 

“It’ll have to be,” Wonwoo admits finally, and he shivers at the way his voice echoes with the decisive notion of an end. He’s no good at endings.

 

                                                      /

 

“Tell me a story,” Soonyoung murmurs, interrupting the silence that has begun to press down on them both again.

 

Wonwoo huffs at this, scrunching his nose. “What would you like to hear? Something about a damsel in distress and her knight in shining armour?” he offers jokingly.

 

“No, I want something better,” Soonyoung answers easily, casually bumping his shoulder against Wonwoo’s. He shivers. “Tell me about your favourite time playing the piano,” he says, dead serious. Wonwoo blinks in surprise.

 

“Why would you want to hear about that?” Wonwoo asks, confusion bleeding through his tone evidently.

 

“I’m trying to do this thing called ‘getting to know you’, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it,” Soonyoung answers sarcastically. “Sometimes friends take part in this ritual together, and they just hang out to swap stories because they want to hear more about the other person,” Soonyoung continues, and Wonwoo can’t hold back the laughter that bubbles to his lips.

 

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Wonwoo answers, marvelling at how easily his lips have pulled themselves into a smile despite the heaviness of the atmosphere earlier. “I taught myself how to play this one 30 Seconds to Mars song on the piano, by ear, when I was 9 or 10,” he starts, and it’s comical to see the way Soonyoung perks up at this. He doesn’t interrupt, though, so Wonwoo continues. “It was only because I remember really liking the sound of a piano, and I was the kind of kid who’d spend hours on Youtube just watching people do piano covers of songs I liked. I figured if they could do it, so could I. We didn’t have a piano at home then, though, so…” he trails off as Soonyoung’s eyes light up in understanding.

 

“Oh my god, _that’s_ why you’d sneak into the music room after school? To just tinker around on the keys till you got the sounds right, just for the fun of it?” Soonyoung asks incredulously, and Wonwoo laughs at how thoroughly scandalized he looks. “Don’t laugh! I was expecting some deep, heartfelt story about the first time you played a completed Bach piece or something like that, and this is what you give me. _Jared Leto’s_ music, Wonwoo,” Soonyoung emphasizes, his hand over his heart in over-exaggerated offence. Before he can help himself, he’s dissolving into peals of laughter as Soonyoung thumps him on the arm and whines at him to _stop laughing Wonwoo,_ _this is serious_ , but all he can feel is the crinkling of his eyes and the way his cheeks burn from smiling in a way that is completely unfamiliar to him. He decides that he just might not hate it.

 

“What about you, then?” Wonwoo asks once they’ve calmed down. “You play the violin right? How’d you start?”

 

In the dim light that is now beginning to course through the outside world, Wonwoo sees Soonyoung’s face crumple and a flash of pain lances through his chest, like he’s asked the wrong questions, to which the answers hold only unpleasantness. The air of playfulness that had settled around their heaving shoulders earlier has completely disappeared, and all that’s left behind is the ashy aftertaste of loss. Wonwoo doesn’t know whether or not it would be self-centered to think of this change as being his fault. Somewhat distractedly, he realizes that maybe this is how Soonyoung feels whenever he has to very cautiously prompt Wonwoo, and his heart aches with gratitude.

 

“This isn’t the place for that story,” Soonyoung replies cryptically, a sad smile splintered across his features. Wonwoo’s stomach twists painfully at how foreign such a forlorn expression looks on Soonyoung. “Do you think we could go up on the roof instead?”

 

It takes eight flights of stairs and a lot of heaving and panting before they finally reach the door leading to the rooftop of the school, secured with a hanging padlock that has definitely seen better days. Thankfully, though, the lock is dangling wide open, and Wonwoo silently thanks the generation of rebellious teenagers who used to come to the old compound to drink and smoke on the roof. He’s got no clue how to pick a lock, and that would’ve surely brought their night to an end.

 

When Wonwoo finally pushes the heavy door open (while Soonyoung stands by the side, like he should be laughing at Wonwoo but instead he’s silent and curled into himself. Wonwoo already despises seeing him like this.), Soonyoung stumbles out into the warmth of an early morning.

 

The clouds from last night have mostly cleared, leaving a soft, grey layer of cloud cover instead of an ominous wave of darkness. Wonwoo can’t help but breathe in deeply, enjoying the smell of rain on grass and the gentle slowness of a world just rising from its’ bed. Staying in bed all day and staying up all morning breed different kinds of tiredness, he realizes. Skipped classes due to finding dullness in everything he lays his tired eyes on is entirely different from a night of quiet contemplation and companionship. His perpetual exhaustion hums beneath his ribs, but for once, Wonwoo pays it no mind. Instead, he’s absorbed in the wonder of the morning and Soonyoung’s inexplicably sad gaze over the overgrown fields below them. He doesn’t say a word.

 

It’s only when Soonyoung sits at the very edge of the roof, patting the slightly damp spot next to him, that Wonwoo moves forward. He settles beside Soonyoung, clasping his hands to match Soonyoung’s sudden stillness. He’s seen bits of this version of Soonyoung poke his head round the corner as the night wore on, and it concerns Wonwoo how much this disturbs him. Soonyoung exudes an air of someone who was always made for movement, always teeming with energy like a freshly-shaken soda bottle. To have him sitting so still and quiet frightens him with the distinct wrongness of it. He doesn’t know what to do with this Soonyoung, never expected him to have skeletons living in his closet the same way he does and for once Wonwoo thinks he might just understand Soonyoung’s desperate need to exorcise everyone’s demons but his own.

 

“You asked about my playing the violin, right?” Soonyoung all but whispers, his voice barely disturbing the silence of the morning. “I’m surprised you don’t already know,” he says again, only a little louder this time, letting out a barking, self-deprecating laugh. Wonwoo grimaces at the way it comes out, grating and distinctly _wrong_.

 

“Some of my friends...when they knew I was hanging around you, they told me to be careful. Why would they do that?” Wonwoo wonders aloud, still unable to reconcile the malicious image of Soonyoung that Jihoon and Mingyu seemed to paint, someone who’s all dark eyes and knife-like smiles - so unlike the boy he has come to know.

 

Soonyoung huffs softly in response. His fingers go to circle around his bare left pinky, and Wonwoo is once again reminded of the difference between hollowness and absence. Soonyoung, for all of his wide smiles and child-like attentiveness, seems to be rooted in absence that morning. Still, Wonwoo sits. This is a story Soonyoung will tell on his own time, and he will lean in to listen whenever he wants him to.

 

Just as the birds are starting to rustle awake and the sky is in its transition from a cool blue to a stunning orange, Soonyoung starts to speak.

 

He tells Wonwoo of days spent in small dance studios with friends, where they’d spend the precious first seconds of freedom after lessons letting their legs carry them to the practice rooms of school. Soonyoung talks to him about the moons that passed between their laughter and a string of shared instant meals in the bowels of the school building, about the way they’d joked that Jun’s goofy teenage boy smile could rival even the brightness of the crescent moon. They’d come up with their own insignia for their group that night: a crescent moon, surrounded by 4 glittering stars.

 

And suddenly - darkness, only darkness that covers them in a dense blanket. Competitiveness bares its fangs between two of the boys, easy smiles and teasing words turned vicious and critical, losing their way to each other.

 

There’s a pause before the finale, Soonyoung breathing in deeply and fixing his eyes on the far end of the horizon, still not looking at Wonwoo. Wonwoo can barely keep himself from squeezing his eyes shut before the moment hits.

 

Lastly, Soonyoung tells him of the great splitting crack that ran up the leg of one of the boys, the way he’d had lain on the wooden floors crying out, and how Soonyoung can never forget that mournful sound no matter how hard he tries. A rumour gets out that Soonyoung had chosen to to jeopardize this boy’s career in dance before it even began, fearing that he’d easily be overtaken and left behind. The world turns its back on Soonyoung, his friends refuse to look him in the eye, and dance is no longer something he can turn to without smelling hospital walls and hearing sirens and seeing white.

 

Soonyoung ends this chapter with the memory of brightness that hurts his eyes, of trembling hands that scrambled their way back to a dusty violin case, begging for movement and activity and art and _anything_ but this unforgiving stillness he has forced himself into. And even with this, the whispers never stop. The world does not forget, and he’s never truly forgiven. You can run around acting like everyone’s self-appointed guardian angel and desperately try to fix all the wrongs in the world for the one thing you couldn’t get right, and still forgiveness is nowhere to be seen. What do you do then?

 

Wonwoo reaches across to take Soonyoung’s shaking hand in his own, and together they watch the sun cover the field with an almost-blinding sheen of orange. It bounces off of Soonyoung’s piercings, his nose ring twitching every time he sniffles, his earrings twinkling happily in the morning light. Right at the base of his ear, Wonwoo spies a small ring with the insignia of a crescent moon and four stars.

 

He squeezes Soonyoung’s hand just a little tighter.

  
**iv. all this heaven never could describe / such a feeling as i’m healing**

 

Contrary to popular belief, daylight doesn’t disintegrate ghosts.

 

Soonyoung and Wonwoo sit on the cracking edge of a roof of the abandoned school in silence as the sun rises into the morning sky. For a few minutes, they gorge their eyes with the brilliance of green grass and the various shades of colour that adorn some of the buildings in their city, before the clouds gather again and cover everything in the sickness of grey. Wonwoo sighs as the colour drains itself from their world once again, their little glimpse into brighter shores cut short by their unfortunate geographical placement on a map and an overwhelming tendency towards submersion. Soonyoung, on the other hand, simply blinks in nonchalance before he launches himself to his feet, effectively startling Wonwoo.

 

“I guess I’ll just go home now,” Soonyoung says, stuffing his hand into his pocket. Wonwoo’s stomach flips at the strange, faraway expression that Soonyoung’s been wearing for far too long, and it occurs to him that the last thing he should be doing is leaving Soonyoung alone. (The truth is he really doesn’t like the fact that what they’d talked about is clearly still on Soonyoung’s mind, serving as a ever-present reminder that they both have baggage that they so desperately need to put down. The right way to solve it isn’t to stand across from each other and demand that the other hand all their burdens to them - that’s never worked.)

 

“Why don’t you come to mine for breakfast? It’s the least I can do,” Wonwoo offers quickly, hoping to catch Soonyoung before he turns away and walks out of Wonwoo’s life. Call him dramatic, but the distinct sense of a possible ending hangs in the air, suffocating him. He doesn’t want Soonyoung to walk away from him, from their adventures that have barely started, or from the imaginary image of a home where he can finally set his things down after years of walking hunch-backed. He’s tired, Wonwoo can tell. He would like to offer Soonyoung a place to rest, the same as what he is doing for him.

 

“You..you still want to continue hanging out?” Soonyoung asks, and the pure disbelief in his voice catches Wonwoo off-guard. Soonyoung’s eyes are also already beginning to shine with tears, though, so Wonwoo is quick to answer in the affirmative. “Even after what I told you?” Soonyoung asks again, his voice a lot smaller this time. It takes a lot more eager nodding from Wonwoo and a hand outstretched in an offering before Soonyoung finally gives in, following Wonwoo closely down the stairs.

 

(‘Are you still frightened?’ ‘Just because it’s light out doesn’t mean places stop being haunted, you know.’)

 

When they finally crash through the door of Wonwoo's dorm, the rain has already begun pouring down and Soonyoung begins to unceremoniously shake himself like a wet dog over the threshold of Wonwoo's dorm. Wonwoo frowns at this but says nothing, his head going blank as Soonyoung finally lets a little ray of a smile.

 

This _really_ should concern him, the way his heart has been racing ever since they’d sat together in the darkness of the auditorium, with crooked elbows against warm thighs and the air lit only by their sighs - but he chalks it up to sleep-deprivation and the twitching of his eyelids before he thinks about calling it a desire of his heart. That’d be risky, uncharted territory. Just like what he’d said at the start - they don’t know each other. Sure, he knows Soonyoung's story now and Soonyoung knows little snippets about him that he decorates with the rosy tint of nostalgia but that doesn’t mean that everything they say about themselves is true. For instance, Wonwoo knows that what Soonyoung had shared earlier was painted by loss and self-loathing, the venom in his mouth that he so desperately tried to spit out through talking but that never works, only reminds you of the things you carry. Wonwoo wishes they were anything but two lost boys with too many suitcases and eyes that never seem to stop being weighed down by the word 'tired'.

 

Instead of dwelling on all the things they seem to have lost, Wonwoo gestures at the island of the kitchen that Soonyoung delightedly hoists himself onto. As Wonwoo busies himself with the 3 pots he has to his name, Soonyoung’s already taken it upon himself to start prodding at the things Wonwoo has in his home - like the cat figurine that sits upon his kitchen counter, its paw ever-waving. It takes all of Wonwoo's self-control to hold back his laughter when he turns only to see Soonyoung with his brows furrowed, trying very very hard to give the cat a low-five, letting out a low, frustrated noise when its’ paw moves too quickly.

 

When he finds himself staring for too long, Wonwoo quickly whips his body back to the stove, his ears burning.

 

"Are scrambled eggs okay with you?" Wonwoo calls, already pulling out a carton of eggs from the little shelf next to the stove.

 

"That's fine, just don't make them spicy," Soonyoung responds distractedly, now turning his attention to the small herb-garden that Wonwoo has placed on the windowsill of his kitchen. Immediately, his curiosity shines through as he rubs his fingers against some of the plants Wonwoo has growing, just to feel the texture. Wonwoo can’t help himself from stopping to watch as Soonyoung surveys each of the plants, frowning in disappointment when he isn’t tall enough to sniff at some of them.

 

"You don't take spicy food?" Wonwoo puzzles, immediately wondering how Soonyoung lives like this. Spicy food is the epitome of all things good and fun in the world, and if anything, he would’ve taken Soonyoung to be a spicy food person.

 

"God, not at all. I'm so awful at it!" Soonyoung exclaims, turning to face Wonwoo for a minute. "I go all red and my nose starts leaking," he elaborates, fixing him with a serious look. Wonwoo wants to laugh, but he thinks that Soonyoung would be less than appreciative of that. "Plus, all it does is kill your tastebuds and drown out every other flavour - what's the point?" Soonyoung finishes, sighing dramatically. Wonwoo raises an eyebrow in amusement, beginning to whip at the eggs.

 

"Not if it's done well," Wonwoo objects, already reaching stealthily for the bottle of chilli flakes that sits under his dish rack and sprinkling a few flakes into the egg mixture. Thankfully, Soonyoung’s already too distracted to take notice.

 

"I never took you for a gardener," Soonyoung expresses, still trying his best to sniff at a bit of rosemary Wonwoo has on the top of his spice wall.

 

"I'm...I wouldn't say I'm a gardener," Wonwoo responds, a little embarrassed now as he begins to beat the eggs again. "I just like doing things with my hands. This whole thing about not being able to play the piano, or being in a slump - this isn't the first time it's happened," he continues, now adding a little bit of milk into the mixture. To his surprise, Soonyoung still hasn’t budged, and is instead listening attentively to every word Wonwoo says. The tips of his purple hair are already beginning to dry in the warmth of the dorm. "Whenever I feel down on one thing, I try to break state. Do something else for a little while, and come back later. Cooking was one of those things, for me," he divulges, reaching for the salt-and-pepper shakers that sit in a perfect pair at the end of the counter.

 

"How'd you learn to cook?" Soonyoung asks, and Wonwoo can distinctly feel him watching his hands. Stupidly, he wonders if Soonyoung can see how many flaws they house, the way he’ll use them to do anything but what he’s supposed to. They’ll always be a symbol of him running away; tearing them off at the wrists and throwing them anywhere else but near ivory keys and the roughness of pencil against sheet music and the stains of graphite that colour the ends of his palms after a long day. Just thinking of the memory of his hands making music exhausts him, and he tries desperately to steer his mind back to the conversation at hand, but it seems his ship is already dashing against the dark rocks that line the shore.

 

"I watched a lot of Youtube. Having nothing to do in bed all day, I figured I may as well look at things that might be useful," he answers, reaching up automatically for a sprig of rosemary. Soonyoung's eyes light up at this, and he grabs at Wonwoo's wrist as fast as lightning, pulling it down so he can sniff experimentally at the little leaf. Wonwoo's eyes are immediately drawn to the shock of the contact of skin against skin. He should be used to closeness with Sooyoung by now but there’s something strange hiding in the light of this morning. He can’t put his finger on it but it’s shapeless and foreboding and made of all the things he wants but can’t have.

 

Soonyoung’s asking him something else now, looking at Wonwoo in a way that makes Wonwoo think he knows he isn’t entirely here. And still, he sinks.

 

Belatedly, he realizes that Soonyoung has become something he wants. He doesn’t know if this taints whatever it is they’re doing, but it makes him feels distinctly corrupt, like from here onwards he will always be looking for hidden meanings in things that aren’t really there. More and more ghosts to fill his life with, he thinks. As if there weren’t already enough things he’d buried, enough bodies to throw into the lake as the sky darkens and he’s trapped in this garden of loss for all eternity.

 

Soonyoung came into his life with the intention of helping him, of sharing a burden and opening old trunks filled with moths and dust balls. Wonwoo wonders what it’s like to laugh at old photographs, when his memories aren’t marked by morbid milestones like 'I did this to stop myself from climbing up onto the overpass and staring at the night sky until everything I looked at would turn the same shade of blue.'

 

These are the kinds of things Wonwoo holds. Beyond music and beyond his failures, there’s a lurking sadness that envelopes everything he’s ever done and presumably everything he’ll ever do and he’s so, so tired. Soonyoung has potential. Soonyoung has loved and lost but at least there was love there to begin with. He could pack up his things, move on in the way he’s shown Wonwoo he’s so capable of doing, to look back without anger.

 

It’s too late for Wonwoo to do that. Perhaps it’s always been too late and this was always going to be the way his life panned out. He’d be alone not because people have left him, but because  he’s far too tired to get out of bed, and it’s too difficult to think about life with another person when some days he can’t bear to do his own dishes without feeling like the world’s coming down around him.

 

He then remembers something Soonyoung had said to him as they sat in the musty darkness of the auditorium, about how there aren’t any easy answers, but trying to find some is better than accepting the void. He wonders what he’ll say now, if Wonwoo tells him about how his mind betrays him every day, and he can no longer even be bothered to worry about permission or not because at this point it isn’t about him anymore. He wonders what Soonyoung will say if Wonwoo one day has to tell him that he's not even sure about who 'he' is anymore, because maybe there never was a 'him' beyond the vast dunes of depression that he can’t bring himself to scale. It’s too difficult to keep his legs walking forward when every step has him sinking into the sand. Why bother?

 

"Wonwoo?" Soonyoung says suddenly, and Wonwoo flinches so hard at the sound that he nearly knocks the frying pan off the stove where it sits, balanced precariously.

 

"I'm fine," Wonwoo can't help but reply automatically, trying his hardest to wake his mind up, to pull it away from the swampy bog it’d swum to when he’d let it wander. Distantly, he registers Soonyoung coming forward to stand beside him, carefully putting his small hands on top of Wonwoo’s shaky ones.

 

"I know you are, but that isn't what I asked you. Which makes me think that maybe there's something you aren't telling me?" Soonyoung prods, tilting his head to fix Wonwoo with gentle eyes that seem to say 'Why are you still hiding?'

 

"It's hard to say," is what he comes up with, mentally berating himself for giving Soonyoung the vaguest possible answer. Soonyoung, who’d told Wonwoo about the raw hurt that still stings, day in and day out. Soonyoung, who wants nothing more than to help. And this is the kind of answer he offers.

 

Wonwoo hates himself more than he ever has in the moments that follow those words. That same sad smile spreads across Soonyoung's face again, only now it’s worse because Wonwoo knows he put it there, and Soonyoung will always feel that Wonwoo is hiding from him.

 

Honesty is frightening, they both think, as the rain lashes itself at the windows and they fill the air with the scrapes of forks against plates. And yet, perhaps there’s value in the attempt anyway. Perhaps their truths are something worth unearthing, no matter how terrifying, because of how hard they resist. Perhaps it’ll birth something that’ll last a lifetime, a companionship between two boys and all of the fleeting feelings in the world could never match up to them, at this very moment.

 

                                                                  /

 

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo says finally, as their plates dry and Soonyoung looks up from fiddling with his phone.

 

“What for?” Soonyoung asks, his face so openly disbelieving that Wonwoo can almost bring himself to believe he’s done nothing wrong. And yet, he soldiers forward.

 

“You’ve been so honest with me so far. And I keep telling myself we barely know each other, and I don’t even know if this will last so why bother being honest, you know?” Wonwoo confesses. Soonyoung looks down at his plate again, scraping the tines of his fork against the remaining morsels of his food. “It was wrong of me to do that. I think, until now I’ve had my reasons for hiding. I’m not ready to tell you what those are. Not yet, at least. But I shouldn’t have been holding myself back like that when you can find it in yourself to be open with me. I want to be able to do the same,” Wonwoo manages to get out, fiddling with his fingers in uncertainty.

 

“The point of this isn’t to rush, though,” Soonyoung replies, quirking his mouth to the side in disapproval. Wonwoo blinks a few times, completely confused. “I never wanted you to be open with me if it meant you’d have to be uncomfortable. We're different people. I don't behave the same way you do, and you don't need to hold yourself up to the way I behave either, Wonwoo," Soonyoung explains, his expression softening when he realizes how put-out Wonwoo looks.

 

"I'm sorry," Wonwoo says again, out of habit. What else is there left to say?

 

"You don't owe me an apology," Soonyoung replies smoothly, but he’s still looking at Wonwoo, looking at him in the same way Mingyu does when he knows something’s decidedly not right with him. Wonwoo twitches under the weight of his steady gaze. "Maybe one day when you're ready, you'll tell me. I've never been one for secrets to be spilled before they're ripe," he continues, winking playfully at Wonwoo.

 

It stuns him how easily Soonyoung seems to carry his playfulness, despite what he has just told Wonwoo. It stuns Wonwoo to think of how Soonyoung exists beyond what other people say about him, beyond his reputation and his skills and all the things he’s seen as valuable for having. That’s what bravery must be, Wonwoo realizes. To tear yourself away from the roots of things that hold you down in favour of climbing upwards, in favour of greener pastures.

 

Wonwoo wonders if he’s what Soonyoung envisioned when he thought about those greener pastures. He is almost certain Soonyoung never saw himself helping some poor, burned-out pianist find new ways to live. He seems to enjoy it, though. Being around Wonwoo. Which is fine, because Wonwoo enjoys being around Soonyoung. They may be different people, but every time he’s with Soonyoung, Wonwoo can’t help but feel like he’s something (or someone) he’s spent his entire life searching for.

 

                                                                          /

 

"When will I see you next?" Soonyoung interjects, setting his phone face-down on the countertop. Wonwoo looks up from where he has begun chopping vegetables, ready to make Soonyoung another plate of food after he’d whined at Wonwoo for about 15 whole minutes. It’s safe to say that Wonwoo has a very, very hard time saying no to Soonyoung, especially when he’s pawing at Wonwoo’s side and/or tucking his head into the crook of Wonwoo’s arm just to get Wonwoo to pay attention to his pleas. Which is how he ends up here, preparing to make stir-fried noodles while Soonyoung entertains himself for a bit.

 

“I have a class later this afternoon,” Wonwoo replies apologetically, turning to grab some green onion out of the refrigerator. “Don’t you wanna go home and get some sleep?” he asks, turning to scrutinize Soonyoung. He looks alright, for the most part. His hair’s a little mussed up from drying naturally, and it sticks up in little tufts here and there. It gives Wonwoo a little relief to see that his eyes are still very much bright, albeit a little sleepy, showing no traces of how forlorn he’d been earlier. Soonyoung’s still smiling pleasantly at Wonwoo, waiting for him to finish his examination, and maybe looking a little too pleased to be on the receiving end of his attention.

 

“Yeah, I should probably be getting back. I’m kinda sleepy,” Soonyoung answers, stretching his arms back and yawning widely. All Wonwoo can bring himself to do is stare at Soonyoung as he moves - at the way his hands ball into fists when he stretches them upwards, the pale curve of his wrist, the way his sweater lifts to expose a sliver of stomach pierced by a _navel ring_ \- which is the last thing Wonwoo processes before his mind goes completely blank. “You’ll get some sleep too, right?” Soonyoung asks, blinking at Wonwoo blearily. His sweater settles over his stomach again. Wonwoo makes no attempt to reply.

 

“Wonwoo?”

 

“You have a belly button piercing,” Wonwoo hears himself say faintly.

 

There’s a moment of silence where Soonyoung blinks at him in complete confusion before a devilish grin settles across his features.

 

“I do, thank you for noticing,” Soonyoung says innocently, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear to expose the line of hoops that hang daintily from the cartilage. Wonwoo’s eyes dart to it for a second before he swallows nervously. “You can touch if you want, it doesn’t hurt,” Soonyoung offers, running his own hand under the cover of his sweater.

 

“NO, no it’s okay I’ll text you later _bye_ Soonyoung,” Wonwoo answers, a little too quickly to be considered casual. Soonyoung casts him another coy smile before he slides out of the chair, wiggling his fingers in a flirty wave as he strides out of Wonwoo’s dorm.

 

It takes close to 30 minutes of complete silence and internal discipline before Wonwoo can make himself stop thinking about the way the piercing had glinted in the light, and what it’d feel like had he taken the offer to run his hands over the smooth expanse of Soonyoung’s soft tummy. It’s there and then, as it drizzles softly outside, that Wonwoo realizes he may have a little bit of a thing for Soonyoung.

 

 **v.**   **i am done with my graceless heart / so tonight i'm gonna cut it out and then restart**

 

Wonwoo sleeps for most of the day after Soonyoung leaves. He wakes for maybe 15 seconds to press ‘Stop’ on his blaring alarm for class, since he figures he can just listen to the recorded lecture online. He’ll be fine, as long as he manages to present himself for the smaller group tutorials with all of his work in hand.

 

When he finally cracks an eye open (for good) at 3.30pm, he lets out a drawn-out groan at the slew of notifications that now occupy the lockscreen of his phone. A significant number of the first few messages are from Mingyu, who seems to be completely incapable of sending him more than one word per text message. His messages gradually dissolve into a flurry of question marks, followed by a text that simply reads ‘Wonwoo - I took Mingyu’s phone. Tell us you’re okay. We’re worried.’ Wonwoo smiles involuntarily at this, already imagining Jihoon having to lean out of the tiny lecture hall seat to grab the phone out of Mingyu’s hands and swat him away repeatedly to type that message to Wonwoo. He’s still smiling as he types out a reply:

 

To: beanstalk

(15:45)

I’m fine, sorry. I stayed up late last night and ended up oversleeping.

Call off the search party.

 

(15:45)

I’ll meet you guys for coffee after lecture? I’m paying.

 

From: jack

(15:50)

gyu says youre paying for coffee

 

(15:50)

we’ll be there. see you

 

It’s  only as Wonwoo’s phone pings again to signal another message notification that he remembers he had hurriedly told Soonyoung that he would text him (as he was shoving him and his pierced navel out of Wonwoo’s dorm). Wonwoo worries his bottom lip between his teeth for a second, his fingers hovering over the keys. He really hopes Soonyoung doesn’t think that Wonwoo’s _weird_ , or anything else in that strain of thought. For lack of a better word, he was overwhelmed. He was already starting to find Soonyoung endearing, and really considering warming up him emotionally, so the belly button piercing was _completely_ unwarranted on Soonyoung’s part. How else was Wonwoo supposed to respond?

 

Silently admonishing himself, he opens his chat with Soonyoung. It’s fairly jam-packed, a virtual log of all of the days they’ve known each other.

 

It starts with Soonyoung asking if he’d gotten the right number after their brief time at Blue Jazz with an affirmation from Wonwoo, and ends with Wonwoo checking in on his location just before they’d met at the school the previous night - only for Soonyoung to send him the rat emoji in response. Wonwoo had stared perplexedly at it, and even now he’s no closer to understanding what it means. Maybe Soonyoung will always be a little bit of a mystery to him. Tapping thoughtfully on the edge of his phone, he decides to go with something simple. Something to the point.

 

To: ksy

(16:00)

Since I picked the last place we went, do you want to pick

our next stop?

 

(16:00)

I figure this whole adventure wasn’t entirely for my sake, anyway.

Let me know where and when, I’ll come to you.

 

Shoving his phone aside, he runs a finger through his hair and pulls out a new, white windbreaker covered in blocks of turquoise and deep blue. Jihoon and Mingyu had picked it out for him a few weeks ago, when they’d all gone shopping together under the guise of Mingyu wanting to pick new clothes for Wonwoo. It’d been the first afternoon Wonwoo had felt warm, in a long time.

 

He’d seen the worry in their eyes the minute he’d met up with them, felt how badly they feared he was slipping again. He’d linked arms with them, had let them pick a billion silly outfits for him to try on and take photos of; before Mingyu finally hands him the windbreaker with the softest smile on his face.

 

Wonwoo had looked at them then, really looked at them, and his heart soars with the brightest kind of affection for them.

 

He thinks about that as he pulls the windbreaker over his t-shirt, and relishes in the way it feels exactly like the warmth of friendship, of lying in the morning sun with the people you love most in the world and taking in the brightness of a new day together.

 

                                                                     /

 

“What kept you up so late?” Jihoon demands as soon as Wonwoo sits down at their usual table at the corner of the coffee shop. Wonwoo frowns at him, and Jihoon silently pushes an iced americano towards him.

 

“I was out late. Going over some stuff,” Wonwoo says quickly, busying himself by sipping on his coffee. It technically wasn’t a lie, but as far as he’s concerned, Jihoon and Mingyu have more to worry about than who he spends his time with. He’s just relieving them of a burden, he tells himself.

 

“What stuff?” Mingyu interjects, leaning forward. Wonwoo looks away immediately, uncomfortable at the scruntiny. “You look exhausted. How much did you sleep?”

 

“I got just over 5 hours, I think. I’m fine,” he immediately insists when Mingyu’s eyebrows shoot up in complete horror at the notion of Wonwoo only sleeping 5 hours. “And it was only because I went back to my old elementary school. I just needed inspiration for something I’m working on,” Wonwoo continues, dipping his fingers lightly into the condensation that’s already beginning to form on the table.

 

“You’re working on something again?” Jihoon asks this time, and he sounds so hopeful that it makes Wonwoo’s chest ache.

 

“Sort of,” Wonwoo replies, fiddling with his straw instead. Jihoon, on the other hand, clearly isn’t  not buying it.

 

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the deal you made with Kwon Soonyoung, would it?” he asks casually, but the hard stare he gives Wonwoo seems to suggest that the question is anything but casual. “Wonwoo, you know he’s known for literal _sabotage-_ -”

 

“He came with me. I invited him,” Wonwoo is quick to interrupt as soon as he sees Mingyu and Jihoon exchange concerned glances. “Look, I know the both of you aren’t too fond of him. He’s already told me about what happened, but it’s not true. He’s a good guy,” Wonwoo continues, looking between his two friends. They still look a little unsure, and Wonwoo sighs. “I’m serious. He’s genuine, and he’s really kind too. You have nothing to worry about,” Wonwoo explains, hoping that this is enough to reassure them. Mingyu is still chewing on his lower lip, his eyes darting to Jihoon to assess his reaction.

 

“I’ll take your word for it. But if anything happens, just... tell me you’ll come to us,” Jihoon finally says, and his tone is so pleading that Wonwoo immediately softens.

“Of course I will. You guys are my best friends here, you know nothing could surpass that,” Wonwoo states, and he surprises himself at how easily the words come to him. Usually, saying things as heartfelt as that would make him cringe or freeze up, but when it comes to Jihoon and Mingyu, things became a little easier, a little lighter. Or it could be because he’s finally telling them the truth, after weeks of hiding. Mingyu smiles at him, reaching for Wonwoo’s curled hand. Even Jihoon reaches forward to pat gently at their clasped hands. Somewhere left of his heart, he feels an aching sense of gratitude, for old friends who will never let him fall through the cracks of his life. He wonders if Soonyoung will soon assume the same level of importance in his life.

 

As soon as he thinks it, his phone pings. Smiling apologetically as he retracts his hand, he glances at his screen to see a message from Soonyoung, saying that he’ll pick Wonwoo up from his dorm late that night. Wonwoo sends him a very short and very simple acknowledgement, highly aware of Jihoon and Mingyu watching him.

 

“Might that happen to be Soonyoung?” Mingyu asks teasingly, watching Wonwoo’s flustered reaction curiously. All he can do is nod sheepishly in response, tucking his phone into his pocket. Mingyu picks up on his embarrassment immediately, setting down his coffee cup with a loud thud and scooting eagerly to the edge of his seat.

 

“Spill, bitch,” Mingyu demands, and Jihoon whacks him across the arm as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

 

“You know, bitch isn’t really a term of endearment,” Wonwoo muses, only for Mingyu to click his tongue irritably in response and wave his hand dismissively. Wonwoo takes a long sip of his coffee before he lets out a sigh and begins telling them the whole story - and just for a moment, it feels like old times.

 

                                                                     /

 

“I hate to admit it, but he actually sounds like a decent guy,” Jihoon concedes finally, his brow furrowed as Wonwoo finishes the story. “I can’t believe someone would be awful enough to pin the blame of his friend’s injury on him, that’s so fucked,” Jihoon remarks, but Mingyu is not paying him the slightest bit of attention.

 

“Why does it sound like you have a thing for Soonyoung?” Mingyu asserts instead, and Wonwoo curses internally at how easily the blood rushes to his cheeks. “Oh my god, you do!” Mingyu exclaims, and Wonwoo reaches forward to slap his arm in an effort to make him _be quiet, for god’s sake._

 

“He has a belly button piercing,” Wonwoo offers desperately, like that’d explain anything.

 

Mingyu only ends up spluttering at this, and even Jihoon looks like he has to hold back laughter.

 

The remainder of the afternoon is spent with the teasing, but affectionately encouraging smiles of Wonwoo’s best friends as they sit together and sip diluted coffee while it drizzles softly outside. When it inches closer to dinnertime, they simply dump their coffee-ringed cups in the trash and relocate to a nearby family-owned restaurant that’s been sacred to them ever since they’d met in their first year at the school. And finally, when the moon peeks through the clouds and he bids Mingyu and Jihoon so long for now, he pulls his jacket around his frame and strides home, bundled in the warmth of another day when he truly felt alive.

 

                                                                    /

 

By the time Wonwoo gets home, the clocks are striking 1 and his dorm is bathed in moonlight; it’s a clear night, exceedingly rare in this city. He flops onto his couch, letting his jacket slide down his shoulders.

 

Soonyoung still hasn’t texted him since that afternoon, and he swings his hanging leg back and forth thoughtfully, wondering where he must be. He wonders where they’ll be going tonight, wonders what Soonyoung will be wearing. Maybe that last thought doesn’t have the same importance as the rest, but that does nothing to discount the validity of Wonwoo’s train of thought. Talking his feelings out to Mingyu and Jihoon that afternoon had made him realize that _yes_ , he is in fact _very much attracted_ to Soonyoung in more ways than one, and that stupid piercing was just the icing on the cake. He likes the way Soonyoung carries himself, he likes that Soonyoung had been kind and brave enough to approach him, he likes the way his hair fluffs up when it dries naturally, he likes how he sometimes scrunches his nose when he finds something dissatisfying - there is a whole list of things he likes, and maybe it confuses him a little bit because they really haven’t known each other for too long but - he just does. It’s as simple as that. Wonwoo refuses to let him ruin this for himself.

 

He’s startled out of his reverie only when the doorbell rings a little while later, announcing Soonyoung’s presence. He answers the door with his glasses askew and his jacket halfway down his shoulders, and is perhaps a little too pleased at the way Soonyoung’s mouth falls open in a small ‘o’ momentarily before he collects himself.

 

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Soonyoung announces, leaning smoothly against the doorframe.

 

“You invited yourself here,” Wonwoo deadpans, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Technicalities,” Soonyoung insists, waving his hand. Momentarily, Wonwoo is reminded of Jihoon. He wonders if him and Soonyoung will get along. “Anyway, come on, we’ve got things to do, places to be,” Soonyoung sing-songs, beckoning Wonwoo towards him. Automatically, Wonwoo finds his eyes being drawn downwards to admire how Soonyoung’s frame has been illuminated by the moonlight. This, of course, is accompanied by the realization that Soonyoung is wearing grid tapered trousers.

 

Things only go downhill when Wonwoo processes that he has paired this with a cropped polo which looks suspiciously like Soonyoung took to the hem with scissors and went wild. The shirt ends at his midriff.

 

Wonwoo’s world grinds to a halt with terrifying finality as he realizes that there’s now something _around_ Soonyoung’s waist that hadn’t been there that morning. His pants do nothing to obscure it, and the moonlight catches the chain, making it glint mockingly at Wonwoo, daring him to reach out and touch.

 

“What is that,” Wonwoo hears himself ask faintly, his ears already starting to ring while his heart pounds wildly in his chest.

 

“What?” Soonyoung repeats, turning to face Wonwoo, but he’s wearing the most devilish grin, which can only suggest he knows _exactly_ what Wonwoo is alluding to.

 

“That _thing_ around your waist,” Wonwoo manages to choke out, pointing a trembling finger at it for a second. Infuriatingly, Soonyoung only bats his eyelashes in feigned innocence and Wonwoo can do nothing but let his mouth hang open.

 

“Why, Wonwoo, I didn’t think you’d get so worked up over a simple waist chain,” Soonyoung remarks teasingly, looking like he might be enjoying Wonwoo’s speechlessness a little too much.

 

“I am _not_ worked up,” Wonwoo objects, crossing his arms and tearing his eyes away from Soonyoung’s waist, which is just out there for the whole world and God to see, apparently. Wonwoo’s genuinely unsure of how he’s going to make it through the night in one piece.

 

“Whatever you say, babe,” Soonyoung hums, jabbing at the ‘down’ button on the elevator. “Nice jacket, by the way,” he adds, turning to wink at Wonwoo. Wonwoo, ever the casual man, has to hold on to the wall just to make sure he won’t pass out right there and then. Thankfully, Soonyoung doesn’t notice his distress. Or so he hopes.

 

When they get to the parking lot downstairs, Wonwoo can barely mask his surprise at the car he sees.

 

“You have a car?” Wonwoo gasps, blinking several times in disbelief even as Soonyoung holds the door open for him.

 

“No, it’s my parents’ car. I just borrowed it for the night in case we ran late, before the buses and trains start running again,” Soonyoung explains, starting up the engine. “Plus, it gives you some time to catch some shut eye during the journey, since you had to get up this afternoon,” he continues, reaching for the aux cord and plugging his phone in. The whole time, Wonwoo’s been unable to keep himself from just looking at Soonyoung. Not in the same way as before, where his chest had burned with a wild kind of desire, but instead with soft-spoken appreciation that settles into the corners of his smile as he thanks Soonyoung for being so considerate.

 

“My pleasure. You deserve to be taken care of,” Soonyoung replies, not taking his eyes off the road. For a second, Wonwoo freezes like a rabbit in headlights. Soonyoung glances at him after a beat, as if he’d made a mistake. “Oh my god, I didn’t mean that in a condescending way at all, I swear. I just meant you deserve to be around people who will give you the good things you need. Not that I’m saying you need anything, I-” Soonyoung starts to ramble, his hands tightening on the steering wheel until Wonwoo reaches across slowly, patting one of Soonyoung’s tightly curled hands.

 

“It’s okay, I know what you meant,” Wonwoo assures him, giving him a little toothy smile. Soonyoung smiles in relief at this, leaning back in his seat. Even as Soonyoung looks so at ease, Wonwoo can’t help but feel the tightening knot in his heart that threatens to overwhelm his chest and block his throat. It was definitely heartening to hear Soonyoung admit something like that to Wonwoo, made him feel a little less silly for latching onto Soonyoung so easily. A nagging sense of worry still sits in the back of his mind anyway, though, the kind of black stone that disrupts the stillness of a pond just when you thought you could get some peace and quiet. He fiddles with his fingers in his lap for a few minutes, trying desperately to keep his breathing steady and his eyes on the horizon - just to get himself to stop measuring himself in the eyes of Kwon Soonyoung, just to get himself to stop wondering if he would ever be someone Soonyoung held dear to his heart, in the same way Wonwoo has already carved a perfect Soonyoung-shaped hole in his life. And yet, it’s painful to imagine a future with him - but even more to imagine one without.

 

Wonwoo keeps quiet and lets the worms of anxiety gnaw at him from the inside out. He stares out the window, just as it begins to rain again. It’s not like it would’ve been clear for long, anyway.

 

                                                                /

 

They pull up at a storefront a little while later, Soonyoung killing the engine so that the only sound that surrounds them is the noise of the wipers against the rain-slicked window of the car. Soonyoung twists in his seat to face Wonwoo, leaning his elbow against the wheel just to be able to properly fix Wonwoo with a worried look. He’s been quiet the whole car ride, switching between watching the road and watching Wonwoo. It’s almost like he’s trying to reach out to Wonwoo in a way that Wonwoo understands, with concerned glances and the reassuring touch of a friend, and for this he’s grateful. It gives him a little bit of hope, this dynamic that they seem to have created for themselves, like they’ve known each other in the same way that the moon and the tides do - moving together, even when they seem to be worlds apart. Times like now, for instance; where Soonyoung sees Wonwoo receding and offers a hand out without a second of hesitation because letting him drown never was and never will be an option.  

 

“What’s wrong?” Soonyoung asks. “You’ve been quiet this whole ride. Quieter than usual, I mean.”

 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Wonwoo mumbles, breaking eye contact and instead choosing to focus on the storefront behind them. It’s a craft store, with a flashing neon sign that yells to anyone and everyone that they are OPEN 24 HOURS! Wonwoo blinks at it a few times, getting his eyes used to the glare.

 

“Wonwoo, seriously. Was it what I said?” Soonyoung asks again, and when Wonwoo glances at him again, he’s horrified to find how frightened and small Soonyoung looks, right there and then in the darkness of a car at 2am on a rainy night.

 

“No, no, it isn’t that. You haven’t done anything wrong,” Wonwoo assures him immediately, his eyes widening a little, the way they always do when he’s trying his best to emphasize something.

 

“Then what’s eating you?” Soonyoung retorts, tilting his head to the side to fix Wonwoo with an unyielding look that just seems to beg Wonwoo to tell him what seems to be the problem, he wants to help, if Wonwoo would just please _let_ him help.

 

“I’m just a little anxious about something. I’ll be okay, though,” Wonwoo answers quickly, hoping that if he gets the words out quickly enough he won’t need to think about the way the white lie tastes so bitter in his mouth, or much he longs to tell Soonyoung the truth but he would rather die holding his silence than know that he’s entirely alone in how he feels.

 

Soonyoung narrows his eyes at Wonwoo’s answer, but he concedes eventually, sighing as he exits the car. For a minute, Wonwoo feels the routine sinking in his stomach, the familiar self-deprecating rhetoric that starts in his head like clockwork - until it is interrupted by Soonyoung opening the passenger door, and intertwining his fingers with Wonwoo’s. He pulls Wonwoo towards him, and together they sprint towards the awning of the craft shop, laughing in surprise as the cold drops of rain begin to hit them, settling in the strands of their hair like gleaming crown jewels.

 

                                                                    /

 

Wonwoo steps into the shop feeling a little less like his skin is too tight for his body, focusing all of his energy on how good it feels to have Soonyoung so close to him, to have their hands interlocked like it isn’t at all a big deal. Maybe that’s become another thing he appreciates about Soonyoung, the way he just seems to be able to sense Wonwoo's shifts, and tune himself accordingly. And still, guilt sits in his chest like an unmoving boulder because he knows that Soonyoung shouldn’t have to be so fine-tuned to him, to sense his every mood shift and accommodate accordingly. The boy is unendingly kind, but he knows that when it comes to things as gnarled and encased in suffering as this, communication is something he can’t avoid. He’s going to have to own up to Soonyoung, eventually. Subconsciously, Wonwoo leans into him, and is surprised to find his steady warmth unmoving beneath Wonwoo’s weight. He doesn’t move away, doesn’t flinch - he only squeezes Wonwoo's hand a little tighter, and rubs his thumb in circles over it, the same way Wonwoo had done for him in the auditorium. Wonwoo's heart beats painfully in his chest again, and he longs to live in this moment forever, to wrap it around his shoulders like a childhood blanket and know that when he’s with Soonyoung, he’s untouchable.

 

And then the moment’s over as quickly as it had blossomed, with Soonyoung pulling him into the supplies aisle, rounding a sharp corner to get to the shelf that’s overflowing with vials of glitter. He turns to give Wonwoo a wide, mischievous smile, and it makes Wonwoo smile a little too, to see Soonyoung's child-like excitement bubble to the surface through the mere notion of glitter.

 

"What are we doing here, exactly?" Wonwoo wonders out loud, tapping the toe of his scuffed Vans against the tiled floor of the craft store.

 

"We're here to craft!" Soonyoung cries, grabbing a basket from a stack behind them, and shoving about 35 tiny vials of multicoloured glitter into it. Before Wonwoo can get a word out, he’s dashing off to find glitter glue and sequins, leaving Wonwoo behind. Shaking his head, Wonwoo strides after him, grabbing a basket for himself, and a vial of silver and blue sparkles - just for good measure.

 

When he finally finds Soonyoung, he’s crouching in the sequin aisle, very carefully examining the different varieties of sequins that seem to be available. When Wonwoo gets a little closer, he realizes that he can hear Soonyoung muttering under his breath about colour schemes and sequin shapes, and it becomes insurmountably difficult to not be endeared by it.

 

"Soonyoung," he starts, plopping himself on the floor next to him, "What exactly are we making here?"

 

"Anything we want," Soonyoung replies distractedly, turning a packet of sequins in his hand and staring at it, as if looking at it hard enough would give him the answers he wanted.

 

"Anything?" Wonwoo echoes in disbelief, raking his eyes over the display. "That's a lot of options."

 

"That's the point, Wonwoo," Soonyoung chuckles, finally pulling himself to his full height after settling on 2 packets of deep burgundy sequins. "If you're really stuck, just tell me a story with whatever you make."

 

Wonwoo pauses thoughtfully at this, setting his eyes on the paint aisle that stretches invitingly before them. Soonyoung catches on immediately, following Wonwoo's gaze. Silently, he turns back to face Wonwoo, and a beat passes before they’re both sprinting as fast as their teenage-boy legs can carry them, through the world of the craft store that seems to belong only to them.

 

                                                                      /

 

They finally emerge from the store with about 3 bags of supplies on each of their person, much to the chagrin of the poor employee who was unfortunate enough to land this particular shift. They’d laughed up a storm in the store at nothing and everything, from Wonwoo groaning at the prices of the watercolour paints to Soonyoung running back and forth trying to decide if he wanted to risk his own dignity buying the necessary ingredients to make slime because _it just looks so fun, Wonwoo._ In the end, they emerge with drawing block, far too much glitter and sequins, an unholy amount of glue (Soonyoung had eventually caved at the idea of being able to make his own crunchy slime), and a set of watercolour paints, just for Wonwoo. As they set everything into the back of Soonyoung's parents' car, their hands brush briefly, and neither of them can deny the electricity that jumps through their fingers. Briefly, they look at each other, as it continues to drizzle overhead.

 

They slide into the car in silence. Wonwoo has started to shiver, and he pulls his windbreaker a little closer to his frame, like it’d do anything to settle the chill that seems to have seeped right into his bones. Next to him, he watches Soonyoung lean back in the driver's seat, watches as the yellow glow of the streetlamp overhead casts the shadows of raindrops across his face. He lets out a little sigh as he catches Soonyoung's collarbones through the unbuttoned top of his polo. All he has going for him at the moment is that Soonyoung's bottom half is very much masked in shadow, and he thanks the heavens for it. And yet, he still can’t help but stare. On any regular day; Soonyoung is beautiful, he really is. On 5 hours of sleep, too much coffee, and the high of being awake when he is not supposed to be - Soonyoung looks absolutely divine.

 

He licks his lips, and swallows roughly. Soonyoung’s looking at him now, in that way that makes him feel so _seen_ , and for once, he doesn’t shy away from it.

 

"Wonwoo, you know you can just kiss me already, right?" Soonyoung tries to joke, but it comes out as a rough whisper. Wonwoo shivers again, only this time he can’t chalk it up to the cold. He stays in place, though, blinking at Soonyoung in uncertainty.

 

"Do you want to?" is the next thing Soonyoung asks him, holding his gaze steady . Immediately, Wonwoo nods, only to internally admonish himself for coming across as far too eager. His reaction makes Soonyoung smile softly at him, though, so maybe it wasn’t too much of a fumble.

 

"Are you scared?" Wonwoo shakes his head. "Do you want me to kiss you?" A pause. A nod.

 

And then Soonyoung is cupping Wonwoo's face in his hands and guiding him towards his lips so tenderly, and Wonwoo cannot stop himself from leaning in too, from being closer to Soonyoung. When their lips finally meet, it’s nothing short of coming home. Wonwoo sinks into it, pulling his hands up from where they’d been stationary on his lap and into Soonyoung's hair, softly running his fingers over the other boy's undercut. Soonyoung smiles into the kiss, reaching up to pull one of Wonwoo's wandering hands to his waist, where the chain still hangs temptingly. Wonwoo shivers involuntarily at the cold press of metal against his palms, but relishes in the feeling of soft skin in between. He rubs his thumbs against Soonyoung's wasit, and this time Soonyoung shivers, his knee bumping Wonwoo's.

 

When they finally pull apart, it only takes one shared glance and a whisper of affirmation to have them stumbling into the backseat, tugging at each other's shirts and pants until there’s nothing to do but sink into the shared warmth of the moment between them as it continues to drizzle softly beyond the windows of the car.

 

                                                   /

 

The minutes that follow are the most peaceful. When their desperate pants are finally reduced back to subdued sighs of contentment and quiet breathing, they simply lie with each other. It’s a little cramped in the car, but Soonyoung’s cracked open one of the windows to let little gusts of the cool night breeze through, and Wonwoo wriggles comfortably against Soonyoung. He reaches down for a second to run the chain against his fingers, smiling in satisfaction at the way Soonyoung inhales sharply. In response, Soonyoung only circles his arms tighter around Wonwoo, twirling a short lock of Wonwoo’s hair around his finger. As Wonwoo hums against his chest, Soonyoung simply moves on to rubbing the base of Wonwoo’s scalp soothingly, which only prompts Wonwoo to preen in Soonyoung’s attention. Soonyoung lets out a giggle at this, at the way Wonwoo becomes so pliant under his touch with barely any prompting.  

 

Wonwoo stills after a little while, presumably growing a little more tired with every hour that passes. Soonyoung continues running his fingers through Wonwoo’s hair anyway, knowing how much he had enjoyed it, how comfortable he’d been.

 

“Soonyoung?” Wonwoo asks suddenly, casting the stillness of the night into a million fractals. Soonyoung hums to signal his attention, still absentmindedly running his fingers down Wonwoo’s spine. “I need to tell you something,” Wonwoo decides, and Soonyoung’s fingers stutter to a halt. He presses his palm flat against Wonwoo’s shoulder blade, as if holding Wonwoo closer to him might brace him for the impact of whatever he was about to say.

 

“I think....I think I might be depressed,” Wonwoo admits, and the fact that he sounds so meek and broken tears Soonyoung’s heart apart. “I was planning to tell you earlier, but I didn’t want to ruin anything, and I completely understand if you don’t want to do this anymore. I should’ve told you earlier, I’m sorry,” Wonwoo pleads, the immediacy of the apology already breaking his heart. Soonyoung can only reach to hold Wonwoo’s hand fast in his, pressing a feather-light kiss to his knuckles.

 

“I figured, you know,” Soonyoung finally says, and Wonwoo’s breath hitches. “When you told me this isn’t the first time this kind of slump has happened. Or before that, even. But it isn’t anything you have to apologize to me for, or be ashamed of,” he continues, jolting in surprise only when he feels the wet warmth of tears against his chest. “I don’t think we should do this anymore, though. The adventure thing,” Soonyoung clarifies when he hears Wonwoo bite back a sob. He presses his cheek into Wonwoo’s hair, closing his eyes. “Only because I’m not going to be able to give you the help you need. _This_ isn’t the help you need. And I want you to be okay, more than anything,” he finishes, sniffling a little himself.

 

“Are you going to leave, then?” Wonwoo asks, his voice coming out hard and empty. Defensively, Soonyoung tightens his arms around Wonwoo.

 

“I’m not going anywhere, unless you want me to,” Soonyoung assures Wonwoo, and it brings him an unending sense of relief to feel Wonwoo relax in his arms, to curl up in the crook of his neck and press his lips to the space between his neck and shoulder.

 

“Don’t go anywhere,” Wonwoo whispers, and Soonyoung tells him he won’t, not until Wonwoo tells him to go, over and over again until they’re but murmured words quickly lost to the air of the night.

 

 **vi.**   **i found the place to rest my head / never let me go, never let me go**

 

Wonwoo, exhausted from the weight of his admission and the warm press of their bodies molded together, ends up dozing off on Soonyoung’s chest. They stay like that for a little while, letting the rain continue to rush into the earth and carry away all of its dust and grime, to leave the streets coated in the shiny afterglow of a storm.

 

All the while, Soonyoung runs his hands up and down the ridges of Wonwoo’s spine, the rolling hills of his ribs, the valley between his thumb and index finger. As Wonwoo sleeps, Soonyoung maps him, memorizing the topography of his body like he’s afraid one day he will simply vanish and his hands will be left only with the memory of the coldness of bones and the ghost of a breath against his throat. He reaches for Wonwoo in the sticky darkness of the car, wrapping his arms around his frame just to make sure he is still there, watches the way the moonlight intertwines with the locks of his hair and wonders how it is that the world makes him so incredibly sad. It must be some poetic kind of penance, to have one of the only beautiful people Soonyoung has ever known to be so oblivious to the little happiness that the world bestows upon them every day. For every morning the sun rises to reveal a sliver of bright blue sky, Soonyoung cherishes that tiny gap. He loves remembering how blue the sky is. He wonders if Wonwoo has ever looked up at the sky like that, or if the world has knocked him so far back he can barely find the strength to raise his head.

 

                                                                        /

 

Finally, as the sky lightens again, Soonyoung sits up, Wonwoo still cradled against his chest. The other boy blinks blearily, his hands immediately going up to rub at his eyes.

 

"Did we stay out all night again?" Wonwoo asks, only to have to immediately stifle a yawn with the back of his hand. He shies away when he feels Soonyoung's eyes on him, watching him as he tries desperately to keep his composure without letting the vulnerability of mornings seize him. Especially after his dizzy admission last night, it’s like his every action now acts as a chink in his armour, just another soft spot to be kicked at while he’s already bent double. Not that he thinks Soonyoung would exact something as horrible as that against him, but feeling exposed has never sat well with him. He tugs his balled-up shirt closer to his chest, slipping it back over his head.

 

"Yeah, it's almost 6 now, I think. I'll drive you back to the dorms," Soonyoung offers, instinctually reaching out to smooth down Wonwoo's hair that is still in a mess from the previous night. It’s almost embarrassing how easily Wonwoo leans into the touch, how he closes his eyes and enjoys these last few moments of softness before the shock finally hits and this becomes another wreckage he will have to pull himself from.

 

Except. Except he can’t (or won’t) let himself see how softly Soonyoung’s watching him, how the gentle smile curls its way across his face as he finally sees Wonwoo letting himself enjoy something as simple as a comforting touch openly, without any inhibitions or the looming shadow of loss tainting the light.

 

The drive home is quiet, after that. At one point, when they stop at a red light, Soonyoung casually reaches a hand out. Wonwoo stares at it for a beat, then slides his hand into it, intertwining their fingers. They stay like that for the rest of the drive, relishing in the comfort of companionship

 

When they go up the stairs to Wonwoo's dorm, their hands are still firmly pressed together, as if they were trying to make up for lost time. The realization that they could’ve been doing this for so much longer pushes them closer together, and even though neither of them will ever say it out loud; it feels good to have one honest thing. Even if that thing is another person, and other people are terrible mementos to try and keep because they can be lost more easily than anything and yet - Wonwoo and Soonyoung let each other stay together, just like that, because good people are so hard to find and to keep running is a terrible, tiring thing.

 

At the doorstep, there’s a beat of silence painted deeply in shades of reluctance as they stand together. Soonyoung gently swings their intertwined hands together, looking shyly at the ground like there’s still some disbelief lurking within him. Wonwoo lets his eyes flicker up Soonyoung's face; the way his cheeks are still so soft despite the harshness of the world, the way his eyes remain kind and open despite Wonwoo's every shortcoming thus far, the way he purses his lips so uncertainly that it tugs on Wonwoo's heartstrings. Which means there is only one thing left to do, to seal this. There’s a huge difference between the hurried touches and pants of nightfall versus the shy longing of daybreak, and Wonwoo’s tired of playing this game.

 

So he leans forward. Cupping Soonyoung's face between his palms feels like he’s holding the whole world in them so he makes sure to be extra careful, even though he knows Soonyoung won’t break. Finally, with painstaking slowness, he brings their lips together in a kiss, a _real_ kiss, not like the hurried hidden ones exchanged in the shade of the nighttime. Daybreak is new and vulnerable and doing this here, now, feels a lot more permanent than before.

 

When he pulls away, he has to stifle a laugh because Soonyoung’s eyes are still closed, and he’s still leaning forward like he expects Wonwoo to give him more. The very notion that Soonyoung wants more of him, more to do with him, is enough to settle some of the uneasiness in his heart. He does end up laughing, though, and Soonyoung’s eyes fly open in shock, only to fix him with a playful glare.

 

“You can walk everywhere from now on if you keep doing me like that,” Soonyoung huffs, his cheeks still splotched with pink. The palette of that morning surprises Wonwoo - despite the rain last night, the sky has cleared somewhat. Not enough to be cornflower blue, not yet, but the sun is valiantly peeking out from behind the clouds and bathing everything in the light orange hues of a new day.

 

“Like what? I thought it was pretty cute,” Wonwoo admits, surprising himself at how open he’s been. Soonyoung brings that out in him, it seems - and after all, was that not the point of all this? It brings out a softness in him, to have the decisive knowledge that he has finally achieved something he set out to do, like maybe he might not be completely stuck in this limbo forever with no escape route. He owes that realisation to Soonyoung, then. Soonyoung is good for Wonwoo. Maybe in some selfish, clingy crevice within him, Wonwoo hopes he’s good for Soonyoung too.

 

“You need to brush up on your definition of cute,” Soonyoung retorts, but he’s still smiling so brightly that Wonwoo can’t help but think he must secretly be pleased at being labelled cute.

 

Wonwoo pulls him into the dorm after that, despite Soonyoung’s half-assed pleas where he tells Wonwoo over and over again about how much he needs to study but keeps his feet moving towards Wonwoo, always. They eventually end up on the worn couch, matching the movement of each other’s lips and hands. It’s so slow and so new and so, so far away from the sharpness of nighttime sadness.

 

And yet, when Soonyoung finally pulls away (slightly giddy, Wonwoo can tell) he fixes Wonwoo with a look far more serious than he’s used to. There’s a beat of silence where Wonwoo simply looks, and his heart seizes with the notion of an end, again. That is all his life seems to be, anyway - meaningless endings and beginnings with nothing, no one to stay besides Mingyu and Jihoon. Not that that’s bad in any way but he would’ve liked to have Soonyoung around. It seems a damned shame to let him go, just like that.

 

Instead, though, Soonyoung reaches forward, curls himself into Wonwoo. And with his head lying in the crook of Wonwoo’s shoulder, he starts to talk. He tells Wonwoo about how much he likes him. Like a moth to flame, he says, smiling, his hands already reaching upwards to push Wonwoo’s hair out of his eyes like it’s something he’s always done. Wonwoo, on the other hand. can’t dispel the feeling that has rooted itself in his stomach, and the ironic fact that the hook of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Flat Minor has been ringing around his head ever since Soonyoung began speaking.

 

The music hits a crescendo when Soonyoung finally tells Wonwoo they shouldn’t continue this, this spending time together running through the city at night when it feels like they’re the only two people in the world who’re awake, spending time trying to help Wonwoo because Soonyoung isn’t the right person to be trying to help Wonwoo. He closes his eyes. He’s known this all along. This was too good to be true from the very beginning, but he’d steadied himself for the very real possibility of disappointment. Somewhere along the way, though, he had lost his balance and gone tumbling straight into Soonyoung’s embrace. And now, he pays the price.

 

“Wonwoo? Are you listening to me?” Soonyoung asks, peeking up at Wonwoo in concern.

 

There is a beat of silence before Wonwoo squints back down at him.

 

“It’s fine, I think I just finished going through all five stages of grief,” Wonwoo jokes, only half-playfully. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s already being weighed down by how much this loss will hurt and he kind of wishes that Soonyoung would just _go_ already. Soonyoung, on the other hand, has spent enough time around Wonwoo to call his bluff and immediately narrows his eyes.

 

“Why?” he asks simply. Wonwoo has to prevent himself from pulling up all his crumpled defenses in response, from pointing an accusatory finger at the tenderness of last night in contrast to the horror of the day. The way vulnerability can morph into something gnarled and unrecognisable in such a short instant has now become a new source of terror for him.

 

“Because..aren’t you leaving? Don’t I have the right to be sad about that?” Wonwoo demands, sitting up so suddenly  that Soonyoung finds himself scrambling to the other end of the couch.

 

“Did you hear anything after my first sentence or did you just selectively hear the worst parts of it and give yourself your own private funeral?” Soonyoung replies, but it comes out more sad than exasperated, like Wonwoo’s some poor rescue cat shying away from the warmth of a safe home for worry of violence - even when it doesn’t exist anymore.

 

Wonwoo only shrugs and looks down at where his shin touches Soonyoung’s, a point of contact that joins them together. He doesn’t want to admit that that’s _exactly_ what he did. This draws a long-suffering sigh from Soonyoung, and he crawls towards Wonwoo, his head now a weight on Wonwoo’s lap.

 

“I _said_ I didn’t want you to continue on this streak with me with the idea that it’ll heal you. I know that isn’t what I promised at the start but that was back when I thought we were just talking about music,” Soonyoung starts, his eyes darting up to meet Wonwoo’s. “I only suggested it because it was what I did to cope after everything that happened to me. And now that I know it’s so much more than that for you, I don’t want to plant false hope, you know? You deserve more than that,” he admits openly.

 

“But I don’t want you to go away,” Wonwoo interrupts, cringing at how childish it sounds.

 

“I never said I was going to?” he immediately responds, quirking an eyebrow. Wonwoo’s mouth falls open in a silent ‘O’, which Soonyoung takes as a sign to continue. “I said I was worried, not that I was gonna up and run away from you, silly.  So don’t run away from me, okay?”

 

“This was supposed to be about finding the small happiness, you know, the little things that make life that much more colourful. But when you told me it was as serious as this...I became worried that one day they wouldn’t be enough,” Soonyoung admits hesitantly. Wonwoo’s still watching him carefully, but at the visible distress on Soonyoung’s face, he immediately takes his hand. It’s small and warm in between Wonwoo’s own palms and he feels a distinct ache to stay like this for as long as he can. “What if one day everything becomes far too much, and all of this isn’t nearly enough to keep you from slipping?” Soonyoung elaborates, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

 

“There is so much more to you than what you believe. I don’t want the world to lose you,” Soonyoung finally confesses, propping himself up on his elbows so he is sitting across from Wonwoo and looking him in the eye. “ _I_ don’t want to lose you.”

 

“You won’t,” Wonwoo promises, even though he has a feeling he’s way out of his depth. Promising things like this doesn’t seem to compute into a passing seriousness. This is a promise of a life, a future - which aren’t things Wonwoo had previously planned on sticking around for. As far as things go, though, it looks like he will be. He supposes, after all, that things have run their course. He’s had time to muse about all the different ways he can do a dead-run into self-destruction, but after a point (a point like now), he has to make a decision. Where Soonyoung is concerned, it seems his decision for the future is to shrug and say ‘Well, I guess I’m sticking around.’ It doesn’t come to him as monumentally as he assumed it would. There’s no visible brightening, no sudden clearance of the fog in his head to reveal bright skies and smooth sailing ahead. Perhaps the bouts of rain will always be something he has to deal with. Perhaps there will be days where it’ll pour and pour and his whole world will flood, but on those days now there comes the promise of raft-building, of Soonyoung handing him an oar instead of him gulping in lungfuls of rainwater.

 

“I’ll consider getting help. I can’t promise it right now because there are still the financials to work out, obviously, but I think..maybe this is a worthy cause to invest in,” Wonwoo finally agrees, and the way Soonyoung’s face brightens is like the sun.

 

                                                                   /

 

“Will you stay?” Wonwoo asks, so meek and small that he can barely stand to look at Soonyoung for all the times he’s asked the same repetitive question, and has feared the answer an equal amount of times.

 

“Of course I will.” Soonyoung answers, and maybe it isn’t the answer to all of the questions and problems that still plague Wonwoo, but it’s an outstretched offering of an umbrella clutched in a small hand, and that’s more than enough for a start.

 


End file.
